Attorney General Alan Wilson of South Carolina and eight other state attorneys general have a written a sharp letter to the National Labor Relations Board calling on the NLRB to immediately withdraw its complaint against Boeing as “an assault upon the constitutional right of free speech, and the ability of our states to create jobs and recruit industry.”

The AGs’ letter was addressed to Lafe Solomon, the acting general counsel of the NLRB who brought the complaint against Boeing for locating additional production facilities for the 787 Dreamliner in South Carolina instead of Washington State. Solomon’s complaint, brought at the instigation of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, would force Boeing to manufacturer the planes in the Puget Sound area.

From the AG letter (available here):

The right to work, uninhibited by compulsory unionism, is a precious right and is constitutionally enforceable through our states’ right to work laws. See Retail Clerks Int’l v. Schermerhorn, 375 U.S. 96 (1963). Such laws are designed to eliminate union affiliation as a criterion for employment. However, the NLRB, through this single proceeding, attempts to sound the death knell of the right to work. Additionally, this tenuous complaint will reverberate throughout union and non-union states alike, as international companies will question the wisdom of locating in a country where the federal government interferes in industry without cause or justification. (continue reading…)

Good series this week in The Washington Examiner by Kathleen Hartnett White, the former chairman of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, and Mario Loyola of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, on the anti-Texas campaign of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Last July, EPA invalidated the successful 16-year old Texas Flexible Permitting Program, under which emissions have been reduced even as energy production and economic growth continued.

• Wednesday: “EPA is offended by Texas’ successful permit rules”
• Thursday: “Putting a lid on Texas’ economic growth“
• Friday: “EPA doing environmentalists’ dirty work“

The series also notes Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s vigorous resistance to the EPA’s attempt to control economic activity in the nation by regulating greenhouse gas emissions. In an Aug. 2 letter to EPA Administrator Jackson, Abbot and Brian Shaw, chairman of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, wrote: “On behalf of the State of Texas, we write to inform you that Texas has neither the authority nor the intention of interpreting, ignoring, or amending its laws in order to compel the permitting of greenhouse gas emissions.”

The best paragraph: (continue reading…)

It’s reassuring to see two state supreme courts uphold the authority of the policy-making branch of government, the legislature, to make policy in the area of civil justice reform. The opinions from Georgia and Texas serve as an implicit rebuke to the Illinois Supreme Court and the ridiculous legal reasoning the majority used in February to strike down the Legislature’s enactment of medical liability reforms.

• American Courthouse, Dan Pero, “Illinois Supreme Court Turns Back Tort Reform“
• Heartland Institute, Brian Faughnan, “Illinois Supreme Court Strikes Down Tort Reform“

On Monday,  the Georgia Supreme Court upheld the provisions of the 2005 tort reform package that limited liability for emergency room medical personnel. The Insurance Journal reported on the court’s decision in Gliemmo v. Cousineau (opinion): “The 4-3 ruling turned aside complaints that the law is unconstitutional because it gives special liability exemption to emergency medical care providers, despite general laws governing negligence claims that apply to all other health care professionals. The Georgia Constitution prohibits special laws that are not applied uniformly throughout the state and when general laws on the same issue already exist.” The ER Statue limits liability for certain emergency health care providers unless there is “clear and convincing evidence” of gross negligence.

• Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “Ga. Supreme Court upholds ER statute”
• Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, “Ga. Supreme Court upholds tort reform provision”

The Texas Supreme Court last Friday unanimously upheld the constitutionality of the state’s 10-year statute of repose on medical liability lawsuits. In the opinion in the case of Methodist Healthcare System of San Antonio et al. v. Rankin, Justice Don Willett wrote that the 2003 law was “a reasonable exercise of the Legislature’s police power to act in the interest of the general welfare.”

Attorney General Greg Abbott applauded the decision in a news release, citing the amicus brief his office had filed: “A decade is a long time to wait for a lawsuit to end – let alone for one to begin.” The brief further explained that “… our legal system does not remedy injuries in perpetuity. Evidence grows stale; eyewitnesses move; records become lost; and parties receive assurances that courts will not reexamine acts from the distant past that have long since faded from memory. The rule of law is served by clear rules – and that includes traditional rules governing the timing of suit.”

• Fort Worth Star Telegram, Texas Supreme Court rules that patients can’t sue for medical errors found …”
• Legal Newsline, Texas medical malpractice law survives challenge”
• Austin American-Statesman, “Court says different deadlines apply to surgical sponge lawsuits“

From the Texas Public Policy Foundation, “Foundation: Federal climate change proposals could cost Texas almost 200,000 jobs“:

HOUSTON – The enactment of current federal proposals to cap carbon emissions could cost Texas as much as 200,000 jobs and $41 billion in economic activity in the year 2030, according to new research released today by the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

“Texas, having an economy tied to energy development and manufacturing, is particularly vulnerable to adverse impacts from federal mandates to reduce greenhouse gases,” said the report’s co-author, Dr. Margo Thorning. “If pending legislation such as the Waxman-Markey bill is enacted, the Texas economy will experience slower growth and thousands of valuable jobs will be lost. Energy intensive industries with foreign competition could reduce their operations in Texas and relocate in countries without similar mandates.”

By 2030, Texas would lose 144,600 to 196,900 net jobs, even after accounting for new “green” jobs. Gross state product would drop as much as $41 billion, and manufacturing output would fall in the range of 5 percent.

“The sectors that would absorb the most damage from a cap of carbon emissions are among the most productive and central to Texas’ economic success during the last decade,” said TPPF’s Kathleen Hartnett White. “These are the type of good-paying jobs we need to bring to Texas, rather than lose those jobs to foreign countries that don’t handicap their industries with costly and ineffective carbon mandates.”

Yes, you can’t really argue that creating jobs is priority while supporting legislation to submit emissions-creating economic activity to an all-encompassing federal regulatory regime.

Admittedly, it does appear that federal legislation is less and less likely. The politicized science of global warming has suffered serious, self-inflicted damage in recent months (a summary from Deroy Murdock), so advocates of federalizing carbon dioxide are counting on regulation through an EPA endangerment finding under the Clean Air Act. Which takes us back to Texas and the state’s legal challenge to EPA action. From Investor’s Business Daily, “A Green Tea Party“:

In Texas’ suit, state Attorney General Greg Abbott said the [climate science] shenanigans made any policy decisions based on that work flawed and unjustified. Abbott cited several examples in which he said climate scientists engaged in an “ongoing, orchestrated effort to violate freedom of information laws, exclude scientific research and manipulate temperature data.”

“With billions of dollars at stake, EPA outsourced the scientific basis for its greenhouse gas regulation to a scandal-plagued international organization (the IPCC) that cannot be considered objective or trustworthy,” Abbott argued.

“This legal action,” said Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a 10th Amendment champion, “is being taken to protect the Texas economy and the jobs that go with it, as well as defend Texas’ freedom to continue our successful environmental strategies free from federal overreach.”