The federal judge hearing a challenge to a San Francisco...
The federal judge hearing a challenge to a San Francisco ordinance requiring cellphone retailers to make city-written disclosures about handset radiation questioned the basis for the requirement. In a notice filed Monday in a CTIA lawsuit, U.S. District Judge William…
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Alsup in San Francisco asked the sides whether “disclosures compelled by any government in the United States” have ever been based on a listing by the World Health Organization (WHO) of a “possible” carcinogen “and the ‘precautionary principle'” of acting before danger is proved. “If so, was it tested in the case law, and if so, provide the cite,” he said in a follow-up to a hearing on a CTIA request for a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the landmark ordinance, due to start this month (CD Oct 21 p9). “What specific studies or evidence led … WHO to list” radiofrequency energy “as a ‘possible'” carcinogen? Alsup required responses by noon Oct. 25. A city filing Tuesday said an arm of WHO had classified cellphone radiation as a possible carcinogen based mainly on the Interphone study and research by a Swedish working group. The federal government and several states, including California and New Jersey, impose disclosure requirements regarding chemicals labeled the same as the radiation, as “Group 2B Carcinogens,” the city said. It said no known party to a lawsuit has contended that the classification can’t trigger a disclosure requirement. No filing by CTIA had been posted online late Tuesday. At the hearing, Alsup had sharply questioned a CTIA argument that the ordinance violates the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, but he also questioned the city’s defense of the law against First Amendment attack. Alsup said he would rule by next week.