Today, the Board of Supervisors will meet with City Attorney Dennis Herrera in a closed session to discuss the lawsuit brought by CTIA-The Wireless Association against our law requiring cellphone retailers to identify the radiation absorption levels of the phones they sell. The cellphone labeling law will go into effect June 15.
According to the association, the Federal Communications Commission is the only body that can regulate radio frequency emissions, so The City needs to butt out. Also, forcing retailers to distribute pamphlets that say negative things about radiation levels is a violation of the retailers’ First Amendment right to free speech. The City’s response? The law doesn’t set a limit on radiation levels. It only requires certain labels, so it does not interfere with the FCC’s authority. (The First Amendment argument is new, so The City has yet to answer it.)
The lawsuit has been put on hold while city officials consider amending the law and regulations. Those proposed changes, I suspect, are the reason for today’s meeting.
In other legal news, there seems to be no end to the Sharp Park debacle in which golf-loving retirees are going head-to-head with environmentalists because the golf course at Sharp Park is home to garter snakes and red-legged frogs, each an endangered species. The most recent salvo is a lawsuit filed by certain environmental groups March 2 alleging that The City’s plan to continue operating the golf course while protecting the endangered animals is inadequate.
According to the gruesome complaint, snakes are often killed by golfers and lawn mowers, and “the California red-legged frog also became a staple of the diet of the forty-niners during the California Gold Rush, and eventually became an item on the menu of San Francisco’s finest dining establishments.”
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