A recent federal court ruling in favor of a cellphone radiation disclosure law for the City of Berkeley highlights the tug-of-war between states and municipalities as state lawmakers increasingly block local democracy for the benefit of corporations.

This article by Ben Price was published on Truthout July 31st, 2019.

In 2015, the City of Berkeley, California, passed an ordinance requiring cellphone shops to inform customers that carrying a cellphone in certain ways can expose them to radio-frequency radiation that exceeds Federal Communications Commission (FCC) standards.

Retailers would be forced to put up a poster that reads:

The City of Berkeley requires that you be provided the following notice:

To assure safety, the Federal Government requires that cell phones meet radiofrequency (RF) exposure guidelines. If you carry or use your phone in a pants or shirt pocket or tucked into a bra when the phone is ON and connected to a wireless network, you may exceed the federal guidelines for exposure to RF radiation. Refer to the instructions in your phone or user manual for information about how to use your phone safely.

Can the people of a city require corporations to provide information about risks associated with their products?

It’s a fight that has played out in many industries, most famously with the tobacco industry, and more recently with simple genetically engineered food labels.

When faced with laws to force the labeling of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), the agribusiness industry successfully argued in federal court that such laws violate corporations’ “negative free speech” rights. Corporations, the industry argued, are “persons,” and as such, they, like all other persons, have a right not to speak — and therefore cannot be forced to speak about the contents of their products. That argument was used to challenge a Vermont law mandating the labeling of GMOs in 2016. The argument failed, because it was eventually ruled the proposed Vermont label was purely factual and did not contain any language about possible negative effects of GMOs. The Vermont law has since gone into effect, but the underlining constraint on law-making endures: labels cannot contain anything “controversial.”

(To read the rest of this article at its original source please click HERE.)