Image by Lvklock
The advocacy organization that wrote proposed legislation banning natural gas drilling in the City of Pittsburgh has a history of writing illegal laws and losing court cases in Pennsylvania, the Post-Gazette reported.
Most recently, this organization, the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), lost a court battle over ordinances passed by the Blaine Township Board of Supervisors in Washington County which, among other things, banned natural gas drilling in Blaine. Similar ordinances written by CELDF and adopted by neighboring Donegal were recently repealed in order to settle a lawsuit.
More than the absolute ineffectiveness of this organization, these recent defeats illustrate the clearly unconstitutional vision of CELDF. Furthermore, a glance through ordinances written by the advocacy organization reveal that, rather than even pretending to operate within current state or federal laws, CELDF is working within a fictitious frameworks where simply claiming certain rights to “self-government” or of “Nature” is sufficient to invalidate the property rights of individual citizens and corporations.
For instance, a home rule charter written by eight residents of Blaine Township and supervised by CELDF states, “within the Township of Blaine, no corporation shall be afforded the privileges, powers, and protections of the Contracts Clause or Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution, or of similar provisions from the Pennsylvania Constitution.”
Similarly, an ordinance written by CELDF and entitled the “Blaine Township Corporate Mining and Democratic Self-Government Ordinance,” declared all mining activities within Blaine to be illegal. The ordinance further stated that “Township residents, natural communities, and ecosystems shall be considered to be ‘persons’ for purposes of the enforcement of the civil rights of those residents, natural communities, and ecosystems.”
Clearly, Blaine Township does not have the authority to ban all mining activities in the Township nor does it have the right to suspend the US or Pennsylvania Constitutions as they relate to corporations. In drafting home rule charters and ordinances that promise to suspend state and national laws simply by citing the Declaration of Independence or by claiming a right to “self-government,” CELDF is practicing voodoo more than it is practicing law.
Moreover, CELDF’s baseless laws cost local communities significant amounts of money. The Blaine Township home rule charter alone cost the taxpayers of Blaine Township more than $4,000. Blaine Township and Donegal also found themselves facing lawsuits as a result of their adoption of ordinances written by CELDF and lawsuits are never inexpensive affairs for local governments.
What’s worse is that CELDF’s baseless and costly interpretation of the law somehow won the confidence of Pittsburgh City Councilman Doug Shields who introduced their bizarre legislation right here in Pittsburgh. The legislation, available on CELDF’s website, is remarkably similar to Blaine Township ordinances already invalidated by a court.
Like the Blaine Township mining ban, the legislation introduced by Doug Shields claims to be enacted “pursuant to the inherent right of the residents of the City of Pittsburgh to govern their own community, including, without limitation, the Declaration of Independence’s declaration that governments are instituted to secure the rights of people, and the Pennsylvania Constitution’s recognition that ‘all power is inherent in the people.’”
Under Section 8 entitled “People’s Right To Self-Government,” the legislation also states that, if any other government entity attempts to invalidate the legislation, the City will take steps to “separate the municipality from the other levels of government used to preempt, amend, alter, or overturn the provisions of this Ordinance or other levels of government used to intimidate the people of the City of Pittsburgh or their elected officials.”
In essence, Section 8 suggests that, if the ordinance is invalidated by a court – as it certainly will be –, the City maintains the right to secede from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in order to maintain a natural gas drilling ban.
As recent court cases and a cursory examination of this organization’s history makes clear, CELDF is an organization dedicated to peddling blatantly illegal and unconstitutional ordinances to local government officials across Pennsylvania. Making this organization relevant to Pittsburghers, CELDF has found its latest rube in the form of Pittsburgh City Councilman Doug Shields. The legislation that CELDF wrote and Shields introduced will, if adopted, prompt a lawsuit which the City will lose and which will cost Pittsburgh taxpayers money that we can ill afford to spend.
Giles Howard is the founder and president of the Publius Foundation. Email Giles at ghoward[at]publiusfoundation.com.
Thanks for putting this out there for others to see. I am just one of the many Blaine Township residents who fought back to prove to others that CELDF was getting the township in over it’s head and what broke the camel’s back was the writing of a Home Rule Charter that violated the rights of the citizens and CELDF lined their own pockets in the process. CELDF puts out information on their websites that is not true and in our case even put a photo on their website with a caption that the house in the picture was damaged due to mining in Blaine Township…guess what, we don’t have mining going on in our township and the house wasn’t in our township at all.
Smooth talkers lead some people down the wrong road and look what it gets them – a law suit and not just a simple law suit, one that no township, borough or city can fight and win.
Again, thanks for letting others know, you did some homework.