CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (Legal Newsline) – California officials are focusing on jurisdictional arguments as they fight a lawsuit from hog farms that challenges the state’s animal confinement law.
Unless they abide by California’s stricter regulations for space, out-of-state pork manufacturers can’t sell in that state. By regulating out-of-state activity, California is potentially costing member farms millions of dollars, says a lawsuit filed in Iowa by the Iowa Pork Producers Association.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office filed a motion to dismiss on June 25 in federal court, days after transferring the case from Franklin County state court to there. The motion says venue is improper in Iowa and should be dismissed or transferred.
Failing that, the case should be stayed while other previously filed challenges to Proposition 12, an amendment to the Prevention of Cruelty to Farm Animals Act, are settled, Bonta’s office says.
“Three federal courts, district courts in the Southern and Central District of California and the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, have considered the constitutionality of Proposition 12,” the motion says. “These courts have either held or affirmed that the constitutional challenges are unlikely to succeed on the merits.
The case filed in the Southern District of California (against the same Defendants as here) was brought by the National Pork Producers Council, which consists of 42 state associations, one of which is Plaintiff IPPA, and of which Farm Plaintiffs are.
“Undeterred, Plaintiffs here have haled Defendants—officials of the State of California—into court in Iowa to address the same allegations.”
Sovereign immunity prevents the State of California from being sued in another state’s courts by the citizens of that state, the motion adds.
“Second, California has no jurisdictional contacts with Iowa, and any effects of Proposition 12 on Iowan Plaintiffs do not create such contact, because Plaintiffs do not and cannot allege the Act was passed specifically to harm, or otherwise targets, Iowa,” the motion says.
“Moreover, exercise of personal jurisdiction would violate traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice, because a state cannot be expected to be haled into court anywhere in the nation simply because it enacts regulatory legislation.”
According to the complaint, Iowa has more than 5,400 hog farms, and in 2020, hog production totaled $40.8 billion. California's Proposition 12 confinement restrictions cost at least tens of millions of dollars for Iowa pork producers on an annual basis, the suit says.
California has as few as 8,000 breeding pigs in the entire state so most pork has to be brought in from out-of-state. The continued restrictions on out-of-state pork is causing pork producers to either abide by California's more stringent confinement restrictions or not sell to California, potentially costing farms to lose out on millions.
Proposition 12 went into effect December 19, 2018, and Proposition 12’s 24-square foot restrictions’ effective date is specified and goes into effect “after December 31, 2021.”
These separate restrictions state that a breeding pig is subject to a method of “cruel confinement” after December 31, 2021, if a breeding pig is confined with less than 24 square feet of usable floor space per pig. This will further restrict the ability for Iowa pork producers to continue sales to California, the suit says.