State Sen. Mike Kehoe wants to send a message to the state of California and the Humane Society of the United States: Missourians don't like your new regulations.
Kehoe, R-Jefferson City, on Thursday asked colleagues to support a two-page resolution to condemn, "in the strongest possible terms, California's anti-trade actions and the negative impact it has on Missouri farmers."
Meanwhile, Attorney General Chris Koster's office is working on their appeal brief - due next Wednesday with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals - after a federal district judge ruled last October that Missouri and five other states didn't have the legal standing to challenge the California laws.
At issue are two California laws.
• A 2008 voter-approved measure, called Proposition 2, requiring that state's egg producers to change the way hens are kept while they lay eggs. It became effective Jan. 1 and mandated egg-laying hens be kept only in enclosures providing "sufficient room for each hen to stand up, lie down, turn around freely and fully extend their limbs."
KCET, a Los Angeles independent TV station, reported the change required "space allocated for every egg-laying chicken in California to be increased by nearly 70 percent."
• A 2010 law passed by California's legislature requiring other states' egg farmers to comply with the California laws "if they want to continue selling their eggs in California."
While introducing his resolution Thursday, Kehoe told the Missouri Senate: "Many people know that they've had some crazy laws and edicts (in California) on their agriculture industry out there, that has affected many others - but now it has come far enough to where it is affecting the state of Missouri."
Kehoe's resolution includes the accusation that "together, California Proposition 2 and AB 1437 (the 2010 law) violate the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution by preventing free trade amongst the states."
And, his resolution says, "Forcing Missouri farmers to utilize "enriched cages' or non-confinement operations in order to do business in California will negatively impact the Missouri economy and food supply."
Koster made the same arguments in the federal lawsuit filed Feb. 3, 2014 - joined by Nebraska, Oklahoma, Alabama, Kentucky and Iowa - and rejected by U.S. District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller, in Fresno, on Oct. 1.
The 2014 Missouri lawsuit said: "By conditioning the flow of goods across its state lines on the method of their production, California is attempting to regulate agricultural practices beyond its own borders.
"Worse, the people most directly affected by California's extraterritorial regulation - farmers in our states who must either comply with (the 2010 California law) or lose access to the largest market in the United States - have no representatives in California's legislature and no voice in determining California's agricultural policy."
The lawsuit noted Missouri exports one-third of the eggs produced here to California - more than any other state except Iowa.
But Mueller wrote: "It is patently clear plaintiffs are bringing this action on behalf of a subset of each state's egg farmers, not on behalf of each state's population generally."
The Humane Society of the United States called last year's lawsuit baseless. "The Judge's opinion (found) that their entire theory for why California's food safety and hen protection law will harm egg farmers is totally without merit," said Jonathan Lovvorn, chief counsel for animal protection litigation.
Kehoe's resolution accuses the HSUS of pushing for the new laws, as part of its national agenda "intended to decrease, and eventually eliminate, the public's consumption of animal protein."
Several news reports in California in January said the new laws already have raised egg prices in California by at least 35 percent.
If the House and Senate agree, copies of Kehoe's resolution would be sent to California's legislative leaders.