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NEWS - States ask court to restore
Subject: NEWS - States ask court to restore trade-restriction law
States ask court to restore trade-restriction law
BILL SIMMONS
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
Arkansas is among 14 states asking the U.S. Supreme Court
to
restore a Massachusetts law that would restrict the
business that
Massachusetts state agencies may do with individuals and
firms
that do business with Burma.
In the opinion of Attorney General Mark Pryor,
Arkansas has two
interests in joining a friend of the court brief
supporting restoration
of the law involved in this case, Pryor spokesman Michael
Teague
said Wednesday.
One is that it would be better for states to know
whether it will be
legal for them to take the sort of action Massachusetts
took in
enacting its law. If it's not legal, states would know not
to waste
time doing it, Teague said.
The other is that this is an attempt to protect the
state's rights
from federal encroachment, Teague said.
In 1996, Massachusetts enacted the Massachusetts Burma
Law
requiring state officials to maintain a "restricted
purchase list" of
firms engaged in business with Burma. Being on the list
means the
firm's ability to sell goods and servants to Massachusetts
is limited.
The Massachusetts law was challenged in a federal
court lawsuit
filed against the state by the National Foreign Trade
Council, which
represents about 600 U.S. corporations. The case has been
joined
by numerous business, labor and human rights organizations
as
friends of the court.
The district court struck down the law, and the 1st
U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals upheld the district court's finding that
Massachusetts' action interferes with the foreign affairs
power of
the federal government. The appeals court also found that
the state
law violates the Foreign Commerce Clause and the Supremacy
Clause because it pre-empted federal sanctions against
Burma.
The position Arkansas is taking in the case holds that
states fear
that they'll be forced to trade with countries run by
brutal regimes if
the high court upholds the decision striking down the
Massachusetts law. Burma's military dictatorship has been
accused of drug trafficking, torture and using slave
labor.
Dozens of states, counties and municipalities have
imposed
sanctions on companies that deal with repressive
governments in
Nigeria, China, Cuba or Burma. Others forbid pension funds
from
investing in companies in Northern Ireland that
discriminate on the
basis of religion. There has been no cost to Arkansas for
its
involvement in the case other than the time it took a
state-paid
attorney on Pryor's staff to read the brief and the time
it took to
discuss the matter within the attorney general's office,
Teague
said.
The government of Burma now calls the nation by the
name
Myanmar.
Information for this article was contributed by The
Associated
Press.
This article was published on Thursday, October 21, 1999