1 May 1998
USA TODAY
Barbara Slavin

Foreign policy at state level draws lawsuit

A business group on Thursday filed the first challenge in federal court to a proliferation of sanctions by state and local governments against foreign countries.

The lawsuit, against a Massachusetts law that penalizes U.S. companies trading with Burma, was widely anticipated because of its potential impact on U.S. business abroad and on human rights campaigns.

"We regard this suit (as) an important test case," said Frank Kittredge, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, a Washington-based association of 580 companies.

More than two dozen states and localities have recently passed or all considering laws to deter trade with Burma, Switzerland, Nigeria, Indonesia or Cuba.

Concerns range from serious human rights violations in Burma, where a military dictatorship nullified free elections in 1990, to dissatisfactions with Switzerland's restitution concerning property confiscated from Jews during World War II.

Human rights advocates regard such laws as an effective tool honed during the long campaign against apartheid in South Africa.

Byron rushing, the state representative who wrote the Massachusetts bill, said he welcomes the lawsuit as "a major opportunity to talk about human rights in Burma."

The plaintiffs argue that such sanctions are an unconstitutional and harmful intrusion into U.S. foreign policy.

Dan O'Flaherty, vice president of the trade council, said, "We're against unilateral sanctions on grounds of self-interest and because they don't work."

The Clinton administration is quietly supportive of the lawsuit. But the Justice Department declined to comment.

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