Preemption

I published this post last January but my law partners – who won the case – asked me to take it down. Why? Because the other parties asked the N.C. Supreme Court to review the decision and one of the bases for higher review is a case’s significance.

And since I had described this decision…

In 2008 our economic ship’s engines faltered before the ship itself started to list and then to sink. Local and state government agencies joined hands with the development community to devise an interesting floatation device, eventually termed, in governmental prose, “The Permit Extension Act of 2009.”

The Extension Act, essentially, stopped the earth from spinning…

This week the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court (Commonwealth v. East Brunswick Township) used the doctrine of preemption to overturn a local ordinance that attempted to regulate the application of sewage sludge.  Sewage sludge, typically in the form of residue from wastewater treatment plants,  is a form of pasture fertilizer that farmers love.  It is nitrogen rich…