High Court Allows Communities to Set Pesticide Rules : Judiciary: The justices say federal law does not bar cities from enacting regulations tougher than those of U.S. Little effect seen in California.

WASHINGTON —  In a ruling that could allow cities and towns to ban the use of pesticides and lawn-care chemicals, the Supreme Court said Friday that the federal pesticide law does not prohibit local communities from enacting stricter regulations on their own.

The town of Casey, Wis., population 404, has the authority to enact an ordinance forbidding homeowners to spray herbicides on their property, the justices said.

In the 1972 pesticide law, Congress established federal regulations, but it did not intend to preempt state and local governments from adopting additional regulations , the court said.

Although the 9-0 ruling is expected to have a broad impact in much of the nation, it will probably have no immediate effect in California, according to state officials.

In 1984, the Legislature gave the state the sole authority to regulate pesticides in California “to the exclusion of all local regulation.” That measure was pushed by the farming lobby, which feared a proliferation of county and city ordinances banning the use of pesticides and other chemicals, state lawyers said.

Earlier that year, the state Supreme Court, acting in a Mendocino County case, had ruled that California law allowed local governments to enact their own regulation on pesticides. The Legislature then moved quickly to overturn that decision and put all the authority in the hands of state officials.

That state law is unaffected by Friday’s interpretation of federal law by the high court, state lawyers said.

“This (Supreme Court decision) doesn’t mean anything for us because the state has preempted local regulations of pesticides,” said Victoria Gall, senior staff counsel for the California Department of Food and Agriculture in Sacramento.

Nonetheless, the issue remains a recurring controversy in the state. During last year’s reappearance of the Mediterranean fruit fly, city officials in Los Angeles, Pasadena and Fullerton, among others, tried to block the aerial spraying of malathion.

State officials contended that the spraying was necessary to prevent the spread of the fruit fly and damage to California’s fruit and vegetable industry. As a legal matter, state officials said, the local governments had no authority to act on their own.

Friday’s ruling does not resolve the dispute between the state and local governments.

Rather, the high court said merely that the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act leaves much authority in the hands of state and local officials.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court, acting on behalf of a property owner named Ralph Mortier, had said that local governments may not set their own regulations banning pesticides or herbicides.

Disagreeing, the high court said the federal law “does not preempt” such regulations.

“When considering preemption, this court starts with the assumption that the states’ historic powers are not superseded by federal law unless that is the clear and manifest purpose of Congress,” Justice Byron R. White wrote in the case (Wisconsin vs. Mortier, 89-1905).

Here, the federal law “leaves the allocation of regulatory authority to the absolute discretion of the states themselves, including the options of . . . leaving local regulation of pesticides in the hands of local authorities under existing state laws,” he said.

Therefore, communities in Wisconsin and other states can enact their own regulations, the court said. The Bush Administration had joined Wisconsin officials in urging the justices to allow local regulations of pesticides. Lower courts around the nation had split on the question.

California appears to be the exception among the states in specifically prohibiting local communities from tacking on their own pesticide rules.

The 1984 California pesticide law is regarded as one of the nation’s strictest. But, in exchange for the strict state rules, environmentalists lost out in efforts to allow even further regulation by local agencies.

“Our view is that pesticides are under-regulated and overused,” said Ralph Lightstone, staff attorney for the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, a farm-worker advocacy group in Sacramento. “California uses by far the most pesticides in the United States and probably the world. (Current law) is inadequate,” he said.

Although the ruling on federal law should have no direct impact on the 1984 California law, some state attorneys said the decision could spark new legal battles in the state courts.

“It will take a while for us to figure out the effects” of Friday’s ruling, said Charles Getz, a deputy state attorney general in San Francisco. “The potential for an impact in California is there, but the possibility for a major change is remote.”