Handing President Bush a significant victory, the Senate overwhelmingly approved a measure on Thursday that would sharply limit the ability of people to file class-action lawsuits against companies.what the article does not make completely clear is that this legislation would bar state courts from hearing claims that are entirely based on state law. anyone who really cares about "states rights" should go ballistic about this legislation--i don't know of a more egregious recent example of federal intrusion on the inherent powers of the state.
The measure, adopted 72 to 26, now heads to the House of Representatives, where Republican leaders say it will be approved next week and sent to the White House for Mr. Bush's signature.
The measure would prohibit state courts from hearing many kinds of cases they now consider, transferring them to federal courts. Experts say many cases will wind up not being brought because federal judges have been constrained by a series of legal precedents from considering large class actions that involve varying laws of different states.
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The legislation approved by the Senate would prohibit state courts from hearing most of the kinds of class actions that have most troubled corporate America - those in which the class consists of many consumers or employees from around the nation who assert significant injuries of one sort or another. It precludes state courts from considering cases involving claims of more than $5 million and having a member of the class living in a state different from the defendant's.(emphasis added)
states rights as an issue, however, is never raised on its own. instead, it is always a principle cited in a debate about something else. in the 1960s states rights arguments were raised when the country debated federal civil rights laws. opponents of the laws claimed not to be against civil rights, but rather claimed to be defending the principle of state sovereignty embodied in the constitution. states rights often comes up in the abortion debate, when opponents of abortion argue that it is wrong for a single abortion policy be imposed on the entire country. in recent decades it has been republicans, who have mostly raised the issue and conservative justices on the supreme court have led the "devolution" charge.
but any commitment to states rights always proves to be rather shallow. when a party gains control of the federal government, their commitment to the principle usually wanes rather quickly. family/matrimonial law is a traditional area of state, not federal, law. and yet when individual states indicated that they might legalize gay marriage, conservatives dropped their states rights rhetoric and proposed a constitutional amendment to bar states from exercising their right to define what constitutes a marriage.
class action lawsuits are usually product liability lawsuits--another area that is a matter of state law. and, in yesterday's senate vote not a single republican voted against this blatant infringement on state sovereignty. now it could be that some of those republicans have never been champions of state rights before. on the other hand, i'm sure that most of them have been pro-states rights when circumstances were different. the issue has simply been a mainstay of the republican party's position for too long. the party's current position on this legislation is yet another indication that states rights is really just a rhetorical device to be used when the states rights argument otherwise suits your position.
