On Monday evening SHAKA, on behalf of the residents of Maui County concerned with the open air testing of chemicals farming and genetic engineering experiments, filed it’s initial appeal brief with the Federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, California.

The appeal seeks the correction and reversal of the decision made by District Court Judge Susan Mollway, invalidating the results of last November’s general election where a majority of the residents of the 3 populated Hawaiian islands that compose Maui County, voted for a Moratorium on industrial chemical activities until safety studies could be performed to insure there would be no harm to our communities health or environment. 

The chemical industries involved (principally Monsanto and Dow Chemical’s “agriculture” division) acknowledge having spent millions in advertising, political lobbying and legal fees trying to defeat the measure, and having to demonstrate that what they are doing in Hawaii is not harmful.

In summary of the 60 pages of legal arguments presented the brief, in it’s conclusion states: 

“This case involves one of the most fundamental rights of citizens, the right to adopt laws to protect public health and the environment. These rights are rooted in both the U.S. and Hawai‘i constitutions. A majority of Maui residents exercised this right by voting in favor of this Ordinance. The largest chemical companies in the world spent millions of dollars to try and convince Maui voters that they did not need the Ordinance. County officials joined the chemical companies in publicly campaigning against the Ordinance’s adoption. All of these efforts failed. Instead, Maui voters demanded that the Ordinance be adopted to protect themselves from the chemical companies’ activities irrespective of what the chemical companies and county officials claimed. 

     While the difficulties in adopting an ordinance via ballot initiative should have ended there, the chemical companies, with the aid of county officials, were able to persuade a federal court to invalidate the Ordinance in seven months. In doing so, they convinced the federal district court to: (1) enforce an injunction conceived by County officials and the Chemical Companies without any of the safeguards that federal law requires; (2) deny a state court from deciding unresolved issues of state law; and (3) refuse to allow any discovery on the scope of the Ordinance’s impact in relation to federal and state law. Ultimately, the chemical companies were able to convince a federal court to disregard rights guaranteed under the Hawai‘i Constitution and instead find preemption based on various laws that do not even mention GE crops, let alone regulate against any of the harms that the Ordinance sought to protect. The District Court’s decision was wrong and leaves Maui County at risk of irreparable harms. For these reasons, this Court should reverse the decision in its entirety.“

The industry’s answering brief is due for submission by December 30th. Shaka will submit a brief in reply two weeks after that and then the case will be set for oral argument, before a 3 judge panel in San Francisco.

The full reply brief and supporting addendum submitted to the court are available here and here.