Alika Atay v. County of Maui

The citizens of Maui County voted into law an ordinance banning the cultivation and testing of genetically engineered (GE) plants. We must decide whether the ban is preempted by federal and state law, as the district court held below. We hold that the ordinance is expressly preempted by the Plant Protection Act, 7 U.S.C. § 7756 (b), to the extent that it bans GE plants that the U.S. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) regulates as plant pests. We hold that the ban is not impliedly preempted by the Plant Protection Act in its application to GE crops that APHIS has deregulated, but is impliedly preempted in this application by Hawaii’s comprehensive state statutory'scheme for the regulation of potentially harmful plants. We therefore affirm.

I.

A. Background regarding GE crops and their cultivation on Maui

Appellees include farmers and other agricultural workers, a farmer’s cooperative, local businesses, Maui citizens, and several companies—including Monsanto Company and Agrigenetics, Inc.—that supply seed for GE plants. Monsanto and Agrigenetics own or lease thousands of acres of farmland in Maui County, where they farm GE seed to be used by farmers…