A federal judge has issued a permanent injunction stopping the state from requiring that air cargo carriers charge customers a fee to help pay for efforts to protect the islands from invasive plant and animal species because state law conflicts with federal laws.
State legislators in 2007 established the pest inspection, quarantine and eradication fee for companies that import cargo by ship. Lawmakers also established a special fund for the collected fees and charges.
Lawmakers amended the law the following year to include cargo imported by airlines and to require the transportation companies to collect the fees. In 2010 lawmakers established fines for transportation companies that do not collect and remit the fees in a timely manner to the state Department of Agriculture.
The Air Transport Association of America, the principal trade and service organization for the country’s domestic air carriers, sued the state in 2010 to block the fee as it applies to airlines. The organization said the state law is pre-empted by the federal airline deregulation act and another federal law that prohibits states from collecting a tax, fee, head charge or other charge on the sale of air transportation.
In January the U.S. Department of Transportation issued an order that said the state law as it applies to airlines violates the federal airline deregulation act and the anti-head tax act. That prompted the state and the airline trade organization to agree to the injunction and judgment in favor of the air carriers.
On Thursday, U.S. District Judge David A. Ezra made the injunction and judgment official. The injunction and judgment do not affect the law as it applies to cargo brought into the state by ship.
In the first four years the law has been in effect, the state collected $9,778,385 for the pest inspection, quarantine and eradication special fund. However, only $277,000 came from airlines.
Most of the airlines represented by the Air Transport Association did not collect the fee.
However, a handful of them, including American Airlines, All Nippon Airways, Hawaiian Airlines, Pacific Air Cargo, United Airlines and Aloha Cargo Agency Services, did not participate in the lawsuit and did collect the fee.
"We had already decided to comply with the new law" by the time the ATA filed its lawsuit, said Hawaiian Airlines spokesman Keoni Wagner.
Hawaiian never passed the fee on to its customers, he said.
United Parcel Service collected the fee but, instead of remitting the money to the state, deposited it in an escrow account pending the outcome of the airline trade organization’s lawsuit.
The state Department of Agriculture said the $277,000 will go back to the airlines.
The pest inspection, quarantine and eradication special fund pays for 62 jobs in the state Plant Quarantine Branch, which includes inspectors, entomologists, clerks and technicians.
Because of the loss of fees from the airlines, the department said it is looking for other funding for 20 of those positions.
