Corporate Farms Come to Nebraska…
UPDATE: This post was updated on 12/29/05.
Last week, Federal District Court Judge Laurie Smith-Camp declared Nebraska’s corporate farm ban (Initiative-300) unconstitutional. Judge Smith-Camp found the law in violation of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution as well as the Americans with Disabilities Act, noting, “there is substantial evidence to support the premise that Initiative 300 was conceived and born in a protectionist fervor.”
Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning plans to appeal the decision. But why?
An appeal would waste taxpayer dollars in defense of laws that constrain American food production, as corporate farm bans undoubtedly do. In order to support such bans, one would have to argue that higher food costs for all—to the point of hunger and starvation for some—are a necessary tradeoff in order to keep “family farms” in the black (and to do it by binding government to one segment of the population against the rest). And not even all family farms will be kept in the black, as many of them have incorporated already and the others are dubiously protected by the ban, as the Eighth Circuit suggested in Hazeltine.
Mr. Bruning seems intent on winning the vote from Nebraska’s farm constituency. Though the decision to appeal isn’t solely AG discretion, it is true (point, weblAG), Mr. Bruning would do well to advise Nebraskans—and advise them strenuously—that this form of biased governance has weak Constitutional legs and cruel outcomes. Hunger allows no choice.