[GreenYes] US Supreme Court upholds New York county "flow control" ordinances

[Alan Muller <amuller@no.address>]

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=000&invol=05-1345

"... laws favoring local government may be directed toward any number 
of legitimate goals unrelated to protectionism. Here, the ordinances 
enable the Counties to pursue particular policies with respect to 
waste handling and treatment, while allocating the costs of those 
policies on citizens and businesses according to the volume of waste 
they generate. The contrary approach of treating public and private 
entities the same under the dormant Commerce Clause would lead to 
unprecedented and unbounded interference by the courts with state and 
local government. The Counties' citizens could have left the entire 
matter of waste management services for the private sector, in which 
case any regulation they undertook could not discriminate against 
interstate commerce. But it was also open to them to vest 
responsibility for the matter with their government, and to adopt 
flow control ordinances to support the government effort. It is not 
the office of the Commerce Clause to control the voters' decision in 
this regard. The Court is particularly hesitant to interfere here 
because waste disposal is typically and traditionally a function of 
local government exercising its police power."


This is a significant US Supreme Court decision upholding the right 
of local governments (in this case, two counties in New York State, 
USA) to regulate garbage when there is a public purpose.  It sets 
limits on the scope of the Carbone decision (originating in New 
Jersey).  Note that the decision wasn't unanimous and the reasoning 
complicated, suggesting that this particular issue will be back.

Regards,


Alan Muller, Executive Director
Green Delaware
Box 69
Port Penn, DE 19731 USA
302.834.3466
cell 302.299.6783
greendel@no.address
www.greendel.org  
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "GreenYes" group.
To post to this group, send email to GreenYes@no.address
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to GreenYes-unsubscribe@no.address
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/GreenYes?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---