Inclusion Daily Express -- Appeals Court Moves Quickly To Hear Corporate Farm Ban Case

Inclusion Daily Express Logo

International Disability Rights News Service
Click here for today's headlines & home page

Keeping advocates informed, inspired and connected since 1999.
Click here for daily or weekly delivery . . . OR
Try Inclusion Daily Express for two weeks FREE . . .

Appeals Court Moves Quickly To Hear Corporate Farm Ban Case
By Dave Reynolds, Inclusion Daily Express
January 26, 2006

LINCOLN, NEBRASKA--The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has announced that it would hear an appeal by Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning over a state law that a lower federal court ruled discriminates against farmers with disabilities, the Lincoln Journal Star reported Wednesday.

Last month, U.S. District Court Judge Laurie Smith-Camp said Thursday that Initiative 300, which was added to Nebraska's constitution in 1982, violates both the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act and the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution. The law bans corporations and some other business entities from owing farmland or engaging in agricultural activity in Nebraska.

Several ranchers filed a lawsuit against the state, claiming the ban's requirement that at least one family member who owned a farm had to be engaged in its daily physical activities unfairly discriminates against farmers with disabilities. The plaintiffs also claimed the law kept them from trying to form family corporations to protect their own operations or to combine their operations with neighbors.

At least eight other states had passed laws restricting corporate farm ownership during the 1970s and 1980s. In 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of a similar decision that found that South Dakota's law against corporate farming was unconstitutional.

Plaintiff attorney Steve Grasz told the Lincoln Journal Star that the three-judge appeals panel is moving quickly on the case, and has set the deadline for briefs by mid-April.

Related:
"Appeals court will hear I-300 arguments" (Journal Star)
http://www.inclusiondaily.com/news/06/red/0126b.htm

Click here for top of this page

Purchase this story for your website or newsletter . . .

Here's what subscribers say about Inclusion Daily Express. . .

Keeping advocates informed, inspired and connected since 1999.
Click here for daily or weekly delivery . . . OR
Try Inclusion Daily Express for two weeks FREE . . .

Get your news here!