Right to Farm legislation unfairly favors agriculture
Who doesn’t love hayrides, farm festivals, and the like? Agritourism is an important component of farm business, especially for small, family operations. If the sponsors of Senate
Bill 88 and House Bill 1601 are to be believed, the purpose of these bills is simply to amend the Right to Farm Act to protect farms from unnecessary lawsuits related to agritourism. But what’s buried deep in the legalese of these bills is a disturbing and massive change to our legal system.
Analyses of this legislation blithely state that people harmed by farm operations may have more difficulty when seeking justice through our courts. That’s quite an understatement.
Lawsuits are an important avenue to justice for people whose health or property have been injured. They hold bad actors accountable and improve our system to prevent future injury. Unfortunately for Floridians, these bad bills seek to eliminate our right to hold those bad actors in the farming industry accountable.
This legislation will remove the ability to seek compensation for health damages. In other words, no matter how detrimental a farming operation is to your health, you can’t sue them for it. But you can still sue for damage done to property, right? Well, only if it’s within half a mile of the farm operation, even though water, air, noise, and light pollution can and do occur at much greater distances than half a mile.
The “Right to Harm Act,” as we’re calling it, also creates a much steeper burden of proof. In order to bring a suit, plaintiffs must show that farm operations did not comply with state and federal environmental laws, even though health and property injuries may have nothing to do with breaking environmental laws. For instance, if your child falls off a hayride and breaks her leg because the driver acted recklessly, you’re out of luck. An environmental law wasn’t broken; negligence and personal injury suits are no longer allowed; and your child isn’t property, so you’ll be stuck with the costs to mend her leg.
An added unjust bonus of this legislation: if you do sue the farm operator for damages but lose the case, you then have to fork up money to cover the operator’s legal costs too. The intent here is to scare Floridians with bankruptcy, should we dare to seek justice in the courts.
You might wonder why Sierra Club — the oldest and largest environmental advocacy nonprofit in the United States — is weighing in this wonky lawsuit issue. Let’s dig back into all the legal jargon. The proposed legislation adds generation of “particle emissions” to the list of farm operations that cannot be subject to lawsuits. This is directly aimed at protecting the agriculture giant known as “Big Sugar” from an ongoing class-action lawsuit.
The pre-harvesting process for sugar cane in Florida includes the burning off the leaves, causing plumes of smoke that can travel upwards of 25 miles from the burn, dumping black soot on the homes, vehicles, schools, playgrounds, and businesses of western Palm Beach County from October to May each year. The kicker here is that the industry doesn’t even need to do all that burning, because a widely adopted harvest method called “green harvesting” already exists. So, the tie-in for Sierra Club? We believe that farming operations should ensure clean air for all.
These massive changes that hamstring Floridians’ access to justice only apply to the agriculture industry. In the tug of war between industry accountability and consumer and environmental protections, Senate Bill 88 and House Bill 1601 pick clear winners and losers.
Legislation that so blatantly favors agriculture over other types of business and ordinary Floridians isn’t about corn mazes and winery tours, it’s about fettering our ability to stand up to injustice and demand better. There is no justice for Floridians in the “Right to Harm” bills. Legislators and the Governor should stand with everyday Floridians and stop this dangerous legislation in its tracks.