Guns-in-vehicle law ruled valid
The appeals court overturns a Tulsa judge's order on firearms at a job site.
By ROBERT BOCZKIEWICZ World Correspondent
Published: 2/19/2009 2:35 AM
Last Modified: 2/19/2009 2:47 AM
DENVER — Oklahoma's law requiring employers to allow workers to have guns in their locked vehicles at work is valid, an appeals court decided Wednesday.
The decision by the Denver-based court overturns a court order by a judge in Tulsa who in 2007 barred enforcement of the law.
A panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided 3-0 that U.S. District Judge Terrence Kern erred in concluding that the law is pre-empted by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Act.
The appellate judges said Kern's ruling "interferes with Oklahoma's police powers and essentially promulgates a court-made safety standard — a standard that OSHA (the Occupational Safety and Health Administration) has explicitly refrained from implementing on its own. Such action is beyond the province of federal courts."
The law sparked a national dispute over gun rights, pitting some employers and gun-control advocates against workers and the National Rifle Association.
"We're pleased with the court's decision," said Charlie Price, a spokesman for Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson. "It was our opinion that the law is constitutional, and the court agreed with us today."
The law was passed in two stages in 2004 and 2005 by legislators who were incensed that the Weyerhauser Corp. fired eight workers at a timber mill in southeastern Oklahoma because they had guns in their vehicles at the mill in violation of company policy.
Over the years, a changing lineup of employers, including the Whirlpool Corp., which later dropped out, and more recently ConocoPhillips, challenged the law, starting with a 2004 lawsuit. Kern issued his permanent injunction in response to the challenges.
Gov. Brad Henry and Edmondson, the defendants in the lawsuit, appealed Kern's ruling.
ConocoPhillips spokesman Rich Johnson said Wednesday that "the safety of our employees is a top priority of ConocoPhillips, and we are disappointed with today's decision."
He said the company has not had time to determine what its next step will be.
In an unusual step, Edmondson had an attorney for the National Rifle Association, instead of one of his own lawyers, argue the case before the appeals court in November. The court had allowed the NRA to submit arguments as a "friend of the court."
Price said the NRA "provided great help."
The court allowed the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence and other safety and business groups to submit arguments as friends of the court in support of Kern's ruling.
Among the employers' arguments against the law were that it violated their constitutional due-process right to exclude people from company property and that the law constituted a "taking" of their property.
The appellate judges disagreed with those arguments but concluded that Kern's basis for blocking the law — preemption by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Act — was wrong.
Kern had held that gun-related workplace violence was a "recognized hazard" under the act and that the state law impermissibly interfered with employers' ability to comply with the act.
"We disagree," the appellate judges wrote in a 23-page decision. "OSHA is aware of the controversy surrounding firearms in the workplace and has consciously decided not to adopt a standard" banning firearms from the workplace.
The law does not conflict with any OSHA standard, the judges wrote.
"We understand (the) plaintiffs may disagree with the wisdom" of the law, the judges said. "Our task, however, is not to second-guess the Oklahoma legislature, but rather to interpret the Congressional intent behind the OSH Act and its general duty clause."
Edmondson's spokesman said the attorney general thinks last year's U.S. Supreme Court decision that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to possess a gun for private use "may have weighed in our favor in today's case."
It was the first Supreme Court decision to directly address whether the right to keep and bear arms is a right of individuals or a collective right that applies only to state-regulated militias.
By ROBERT BOCZKIEWICZ World Correspondent
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