Bakersfield, Calif.-The legal battle continues between Kern County and the city of Los Angeles and Orange County over trucking as many as 25 loads of biosolids into the Kern area daily despite the U.S. Supreme Court refusing last month to hear the case. “This is a significant victory for Kern County, but the case is far from over,” said Kern County Counsel Theresa Goldner. Goldner told Green Markets that the Supreme Court has sent the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which has already ruled that Kern’s ban on the biosolids doesn’t illegally hamper interstate commerce protections, the same question the high court declined to resolve. What will be the next move by the L.A. area is unclear, since the latest setback is believed to have removed the last federal claim against Kern County and leaves only two state-level legal challenges to the sludge ban’s validity ?Çô a claim that the ban violates state recycling rules, and that Kern County overstepped its police powers by creating a law that polices another government entity. Goldner expects the Ninth Circuit to send the case back to the original trial judge in the case, U.S. District Court Judge Gary Feess, who she believes has a couple of options. He can rule that the remaining issues are state issues and that, since he is a federal judge, the case doesn’t belong in his courtroom. If Feess makes that ruling, he would need to dismiss the federal case against Kern County entirely. Then Los Angeles could re-file the other claims in state court, Goldner offered.
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