The Lacey Act’s heyday could be over.
In theory, the Lacey Act was intended to stop international poachers by prohibiting plants and animals from being imported if their importation violated a law in the country of origin. In reality, the Act presents two major problems:
1. Citizens are required not only to keep track of over 400,000 U.S criminal offenses, so as to avoid committing them, but also to know the laws of all the countries that impact their business or personal lives. Try to do that as an honest business owner or as a traveler who just wants to bring something home from an overseas family vacation.
2. The federal government becomes the authority by which these foreign laws are interpreted and applied to U.S. citizens—a dangerously ambiguous task.
The Retailers and Entertainers Lacey Implementation and Enforcement Fairness (RELIEF) Act is currently a proposed bill in the House. Notwithstanding the bill’s lengthy title, the RELIEF Act will limit the federal government’s ability to “engage in overzealous enforcement action.”
Nashville-based Gibson Guitar Corp. made an attempt to follow the rules. They failed. Last August, federal agents descended on the company’s guitar factories, shutting down operations and seizing materials and almost 100 guitars. This action cost Gibson Guitar Corp. between $2 million and $3 million, according to CEO Henry Juszkiewicz.
What was their offense? Gibson Guitar Corp. imported wood from India to make the fingerboards on their guitars.
It didn’t matter that the wood was from a Forest Stewardship Council-certified supplier, legally harvested in compliance with FSC rules protecting traditional and civil rights, nor that Juskiewicz has produced sworn statements from Indian authorities approving the shipments, and documents from U.S. Customs clearing the material to enter our borders.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared that, according to their interpretation of Indian law, the wood was illegally exported because the fingerboards were not finished in India. “In effect,” explains Juskiewicz, “the agency is arguing that to be in compliance with the law, Gibson must outsource the jobs of finishing craftsmen in Tennessee.” Read Juskiewicz’s recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal here.
The Lacey Act should not provide an avenue for government officials to abuse the laws and waste tax dollars, especially in this economy. The word on Capitol Hill is that the RELIEF act isn’t going to pass the Senate because Senators are focused on other issues, and there is pushback from some federal agencies.
Join with Justice Fellowship and learn more about how overcriminalization is creating criminals, stealing our freedoms, and hurting our nation. Call your Member of Congress to let them know that government overreaches under the Lacey Act that punish American citizens need to stop.