This was unexpected
In a sweeping order Wednesday, President Barack Obama called for a rollback of Bush administration regulations designed to protect companies from product-liability lawsuits in state courts.
The memo didn’t name specific industries but it could affect a wide range of consumer products subject to both federal and state regulation.
Companies have long complained about having to deal with 50 different state rulebooks, and the Bush administration aggressively took up the issue. It encouraged federal agencies to issue rules pre-empting state laws and declared that a single federal standard held sway.
In a two-page memo, President Obama reversed that stance. He said federal agencies and departments should claim that state law is pre-empted by federal law only when there is a well-defined legal basis. He ordered agencies to review regulations from the past 10 years to see if the government had improperly asserted federal pre-emption.
Unexpected from an administration, Party, and political ideology that wants to federalize everything. But, it is easily understood
Democratic-leaning legal groups, including trial lawyers, cheered the move, while business groups panned it.
This order does two things. First, it makes it easier for lawyers, a huge voting group for the Democrat Party, to sue, as posited above. Second, it will harm companies, large, medium, and small, putting people out of work, who will need die Bundesregierung (translating “the federal government” into Russian would have been hard to read) to now take care of them, making more people dependent on government.
I won’t argue that many of the Bush rules went too far in over-riding State law and federalism, but there are certainly times where Los Federales are the ones who should have overall authority, and times when it should be left to the States. But, so many of the rules were designed to protect the companies from multiple and frivolous lawsuits (see John Edwards) that would end up raising the prices to consumers. Overall, in some cases, it will make sense to leave it in the hands of the States, but, regardless, Obama is doing this for the wrong reasons, and
Mr. Obama’s order said state laws play a valuable role in supplementing federal regulation. “State and local governments have frequently protected health, safety and the environment more aggressively than has the national government,” he said.
Apparently, Mr. Constitutional Teacher doesn’t understand that pesky 10th Amendment. As to the 9th, yeah, I doubt he has even ever read it. Definitely read the whole article, particularly the last paragraph.
Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU
Actually, it was very expected. Trial lawyers run a lot of state courts, but it is a crapshoot in federal court that, outside the 9th Circu…er, Circuit, favors them less as the appeals process rolls up the chain.