On Thursday, June 29, the Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to mark up S.353, the Interstate Class Action Jurisdiction Act . This bill, which would force cases into congested federal courts and delay justice for plaintiffs, is yet another effort by Big Tobacco, the insurance industry and corporate polluters to avoid legal accountability.

S. 353 is the Senate version of the dangerous bill that passed the House of Representatives (H.R. 1875) by a small margin last year.

ATLA is opposed to the Interstate Class Action Jurisdiction Act. Others opposed to this Big Business bill include the American Lung Association, Friends of the Earth, the Conference of Chief Justices, the Judicial Conference of the United States, and the Attorneys General of California, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Tennessee and West Virginia.

Testifying on this bill before the Senate Subcommittee last year, Professor Richard Daynard of Northeastern University School of Law stated, "To send tobacco class actions to federal court is to send them to their death." Before the House Judiciary Committee, he testified that the bill "would have the almost certain effect of extinguishing all class actions against tobacco companies." Read what others are saying about the Interstate Class Action Jurisdiction Act.

This class action legislation is a brazen attempt to alter a system that has been in place since 1789 by creating new "minimal diversity" requirements. The requirements would give jurisdiction to federal district courts if any member of a proposed class is a citizen of a different state than any defendant.

While there are approximately 4,700 counties and independent cities in the United States, there are only 96 federal districts. Forcing these cases into federal courts means increasing stress and expense for plaintiffs who would have to travel, in some cases, hundreds of miles to participate in courtroom proceedings. How class action "reform" denies justice to consumers.

Tort "reformers" have been lobbying for these removal bills despite objections from the federal bench.

In November 1994, the Judicial Conference of the United States issued its Proposed Long Range Plan for the Federal Courts, which proposed shifting cases out of the federal system. Under the proposal, nearly all cases involving citizens from different states would be shifted from federal to state courts–exactly the opposite of what the two current class action bills propose.

Even Chief Justice William Rehnquist has commented on the trend of moving cases to federal court: "I . . . criticized Congress and the president for their propensity to enact more and more legislation that brings more and more cases into the federal court system." Why Congress should stop expanding the role of the federal courts.

Note: For the latest version of these bills and their status, see http://thomas.loc.gov/ and search at the top of the page for the bill number.