Summary of a Recent
Judicial Development in
International Agricultural Trade

Louisiana's Catfish Statute and
Cajun Statute Held Invalid

Emilie H. Leibovitch
National AgLaw Center Graduate Assistant

In Piazza's Seafood World, LLC v. Odom, 448 F.3d 744 (5th Cir. 2006), the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that Louisiana's Catfish Statute and Cajun Statute were both invalid and could not be enforced against Piazza's Seafood World, LLC (Piazza), a Louisiana company that imports seafood mainly from overseas.

While Congress attempted to protect the domestic catfish market by enacting a federal catfish labeling law, 21 U.S.C. §§ 321d and 343(t), requiring that only fish classified within the family Ictaluridae could be labeled or advertised under the name "catfish," Louisiana discovered that fish within the same family was also farmed in China and sold in the U.S. as catfish. Piazza's Seafood World, 448 F.3d at 746. Therefore, Louisiana enacted the Catfish Statute requiring that "only Ictaluridae grown in the United States could be labeled ‘catfish.'" Id. (citation omitted). The Commissioner of the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry ordered some of Piazza's customers to stop selling any of Piazza's catfish on the ground that it violated the Catfish Statute. See id. at 747. Furthermore, state law also prohibited Piazza from selling its products under a "Cajun" trade name because the catfish was coming from overseas, and the statute specifically prohibited the use of the word "Cajun" for products not "substantially transformed by processing in Louisiana." Id. at 748 n.7.

Piazza brought suit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana seeking injunctions against the Commissioner to prevent his enforcing the Catfish Statute and the Cajun Statute against the company, arguing that 21 U.S.C. § 343(t) preempted the Louisiana Catfish Statute and that the Statute was unconstitutional in part because it violated the Commerce Clause. See id. at 747. Later Piazza amended its complaint to assert that the Cajun Statute violated the company's First Amendment rights. See id. at 747-48. The district court granted partial summary judgment in favor of Piazza, holding that the Cajun Statute violated Piazza's First Amendment rights and denied the Commissioner's motion for a new trial by holding that the "Catfish Statute was preempted and . . . in the alternative that it violated the dormant Commerce Clause by discriminating against foreign commerce." Id. at 748. The Commissioner appealed. See id.

The Fifth Circuit first looked at the Catfish Statute and circumvented the Commissioner's argument that the law did not violate interstate commerce by holding instead that the Catfish Statute discriminated against foreign commerce as it treated "domestic catfish differently from foreign catfish to the benefit of the former and the detriment of the latter." Id. at 750. Furthermore, the Fifth Circuit dismissed Commissioner Odom's argument that Congress had condoned Louisiana's legislation because none of the relevant federal statutes expressly allowed Louisiana to enact legislation that would otherwise violate the Commerce Clause. See id. at 751. Therefore, because the law facially discriminated against foreign commerce, the court presumed the Catfish Statute to be invalid. See id. The Commissioner was unable to rebut this strong presumption by showing that the Catfish Statute "serve[d] a legitimate local purpose that [could not] be adequately serviced by reasonable nondiscriminatory alternatives." Id.

The Fifth Circuit then turned to the Cajun Statute and affirmed the district court's ruling that the Cajun Statute violated Piazza's First Amendment right to use the trade names "Cajun Boy" and "Cajun Delight" but held the statute invalid only as applied to Piazza. See id. at 752-53. Applying the Central Hudson test, a test established by the Supreme Court to determine whether government regulation of commercial speech is impermissible, the Fifth Circuit held the Cajun Statute failed the test: first because the trade names Piazza used were not inherently misleading since Piazza mainly sold its products to wholesalers and those products bore labels with their country of origin, and second, because the Cajun Statute was broader than necessary to serve the interest it was created to serve, which was protection of Louisianans. See id.

The case was decided on May 4, 2006; this summary was posted Nov. 6, 2006.