Colin Moore
2/20/2009
The Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 3-0 to overturn a Tulsa federal judge's 2007 court order that would have blocked a law allowing employees to have guns in their locked vehicles at their workplace.
"We're pleased with the court's decision," said Charlie Price, a spokesman for Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson. "It was our opinion that the law is constitutional, and the court agreed with us."
The appellate panel ruled that U.S. District Judge Terence Kern erred in deciding that Oklahoma's law — passed in two stages in 2004 and 2005 — was pre-empted by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Act.
The impetus for Oklahoma's law came from Weyerhaeuser Corp.'s decision to fire eight workers because they had guns in their vehicles at a southeastern Oklahoma timber mill.
Benton Harbor, Mich.-based Whirlpool Corp. and Houston-based ConocoPhillips challenged the law more recently. The appellate court also rejected claims by ConocoPhillips and its fellow plaintiffs that the law violated their constitutional due-process right to exclude people from company property and that the law constituted a "taking" of their property.
98% of the time I have a firearm in my car at work. Almost a norm around here, just like having a gunrack in the rear window of your truck.