Court nixes large-farm ACRE suit

Staff and wire report

http://www.publicopiniononline.com/localnews/ci_5115712

Commonwealth Court has dismissed a third lawsuit in which Attorney General Tom Corbett challenged a township ordinance under a 2005 law intended to ease conflicts between homeowners and large-scale farms.

The appeals court on Wednesday dismissed the case against Locust Township in Columbia County for the same reason as the earlier two dismissals -- the ordinance was not enforced after 2005.

The court is to consider a similar lawsuit against a local ordinance in Fulton County, which borders Franklin County to the west. Belfast Township in February 2001 prohibited non-family corporations from farming in the community. Corbett claims the ordinance restricts ownership of a normal farming operation.

Corbett failed to show that the Locust Township ordinance has been enforced since the Agriculture Communities and Rural Environment (ACRE) law was passed in 2005, according to the latest ruling. ACRE authorized the attorney general to file suit on behalf of farmers, if necessary, to resolve conflicts over local farm ordinances. Some say ACRE only strips away the sovereign rights of local government.

Belfast Township prepared its ordinance based on a model written by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, based in Chambersburg.

Thomas Linzey, executive director of the Defense Fund, has been looking for a stronger ruling from Commonwealth Court on ACRE.

"It's a good ruling, essentially saying that ACRE can't be used to strike down ordinances enforced prior to the passage of the law," Linzey said. "However, we believe that the courts need to go one step further and declare that ACRE unconstitutionally and illegally confers power to agribusiness corporations to use the attorney general as their own private attorney to nullify local laws dealing with corporate factory farms."

Linzey said Democracy is at stake -- not farm odors, water pollution or other regulatory issues. Four corporations that control over 70 percent of U.S. pork production have defined what agriculture is going to look like in 50 years, he said.

"We're calling on municipal governments to now ignore ACRE, because it is an anti-democratic and illegitimate piece of legislation that strips away sovereign authority," Linzey said. "As people's movements of the past learned, sometimes the only way to change the law is to break unjust laws."

Corbett's spokesman Kevin Harley said the attorney general was reviewing the Commonwealth Court ruling to determine whether to ask the court to reconsider or appeal to the state Supreme Court.

Corbett in June challenged ordinances in Locust Township and three others. His office filed a fifth lawsuit in October against Belfast Township.

The court in December dismissed similar lawsuits against Lower Oxford Township in Chester County and four Berks County municipalities -- Heidelberg, North Heidelberg, Robesonia and Womelsdorf -- that have a collective zoning ordinance. Another lawsuit by Corbett against Richmond Township in Berks County is still pending.

Corbett's office is reviewing ordinances in seven other municipalities, Harley said.

The Belfast ordinance has been challenged in the lower court, independent of ACRE. Four local farmers in 2001 sued the township in Fulton County Court. The issue drew the attention of the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau and attorneys from Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. County Judge John Walker upheld the ordinance in 2005