Iowa court reverses precedent on Iowa pig farm lawsuits

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The Iowa Supreme Court on Thursday reversed a long-standing precedent that allowed landowners to sue for damages when a neighboring hog farm causes water pollution or odor problems that affect quality of life.

The court concluded, 4-3, that a 2004 decision was wrong.

The earlier ruling established that a portion of Iowa's law providing immunity to livestock farms from neighbors' nuisance lawsuits violated the inalienable rights clause of the Iowa Constitution. It also found neighbors could sue if they had lived in the area long before the farm began operating, had sustained significant hardship, and did not benefit from the nuisance immunity granted to the livestock farm.

Justice Thomas Waterman wrote in the Thursday decision that “protecting and promoting livestock production is a legitimate state interest, and granting partial immunity from nuisance suits is a proper means to that end.”

Iowa is the nation’s leading pork producer with 23 million pigs, most kept in large confinement buildings that collect nitrogen-rich manure from the animals and use it to fertilize fields.

The court said judges must use a rational basis to review future court challenges — a standard that will be difficult to overcome because it presumes state laws are passed for the benefit of the public.

The decision is a significant blow to property owners in rural areas who want to take legal action over expanding hog farms.

“Its going to make it more difficult. It was difficult anyway as it was,” said Wallace Taylor, the attorney representing landowner Gordon Garrison who bought 300 acres of land in Emmet County in northwest Iowa in 1972, built a home there in 1999, and was disturbed in 2015 when New Fashion Pork began operating a 4,000-pig operation on land owned by BWT...