Iowa pork producers won a major victory last week after the Iowa Supreme Court in a 4-3 decision said the state may provide livestock producers immunity from nuisance lawsuits such as ones complaining about odor.
The court reversed a precedent that had struck down an Iowa law granting immunity to livestock farmers and allowed neighboring landowners to sue for damages when farm operations affected their “quality of life,” the National Pork Producers Council reports.
Under last Thursday’s ruling in a case brought by activists against New Fashion Pork, landowners still may sue if their property is “damaged” because of a farmer’s failure to comply with a federal or state law or regulation or to use prudent and generally accepted management practices, NPPC reports.
Judge Thomas Waterman, in the majority opinion, wrote that “protecting and promoting livestock production is a legitimate state interest, and granting partial immunity from nuisance suits is a proper means to that end.”
The court pointed out that all 50 states have right-to-farm laws that provide farmers with various forms of immunity from nuisance claims, and that Iowa is the only state to hold that such immunity can be considered unconstitutional in certain instances, the Des Moines Register reports.
“Constitutional challenges to the nuisance immunities in right-to-farm statutes (have) failed in every other court,” the court stated.
According to the Des Moines Register, the court said the Legislature’s stated objective of “promoting animal agriculture in this state promotes the interests of the public generally, and the immunity granted in this statute bears a reasonable relationship to this legislative objective. Therefore, even though individual producers are the direct beneficiaries of the statutory immunity, we think this provision is within the police power of the state.”
Because of this decision, the court said the need will be eliminated to adjudicate issues such as deciding whether plaintiffs have benefited from the law they are challenging and whether the plaintiffs have a sustained a significant hardship.
The No. 1 pork-producing state in the country, Iowa has more than 23 million hogs.
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