New Supreme Court preemption decision: Farm Raised Salmon Cases

As I reported last Friday, the Supreme Court is due to post its opinion in Farm Raised Salmon Cases, no. S147171, by this morning at 10:00 a.m. When the decision is up, it will be accessible at this link: Farm Raised Salmon Cases, ___ Cal.4th ___ (Feb. 11, 2008). I will try to update this post later today with a summary of the holding.

UPDATE: As Kelly Chen predicted in her report on the argument, the Supreme Court has held that the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act does not preempt plaintiffs' UCL and CLRA claims:

Plaintiffs filed a class and representative action alleging that various grocery stores violated state law by selling artificially colored farmed salmon without disclosing to their customers the use of color additives. Defendants successfully demurred in the trial court, arguing the action was preempted by section 337(a) of title 21 of the United States Code, a provision of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA) (21 U.S.C. § 301 et seq.). The Court of Appeal affirmed the resulting judgment of dismissal.

We granted review to decide whether plaintiffs’ action was preempted by the FDCA. We conclude that section 337(a) does not preempt the action as plaintiffs do not seek to “enforce[ ], or to restrain violations” of, the FDCA. (§ 337(a).) Rather, plaintiffs’ claims for deceptive marketing of food products are predicated on state laws establishing independent state disclosure requirements “identical to” the disclosure requirements imposed by the FDCA, something Congress explicitly approved in section 343-1. (§ 343-1(a)(3).) Accordingly, we reverse the Court of Appeal’s judgment and remand the matter to that court for further proceedings consistent with our opinion.

Slip op. at 1-2.