312 • Alternatives to Animal Use in Research, Testing, and Education 
priate funds for the general good may be used 
to require Federally funded research facilities to 
comply with Federal standards of animal care, this 
does not preempt similar State laws. Thus, the 
grantee of Federal funds may be bound to adhere 
to any conditions of the grant, but the State can- 
not be and is not so bound except to the extent 
that the State itself accepts Federal research 
funds. ALDF argued that denial of preemptive ca- 
pability would promote valuable public policy by 
“preserving to the people of Maryland the right 
to determine what constitutes cruelty” (66). 
Once a Federal law is shown to be constitution- 
ally capable of preemption, it must be demon- 
strated against a generally applicable presump- 
tion in favor of State laws that Congress either 
explicitly or by inference intended for the Fed- " 
eral law to supersede conflicting State enactments 
(57,98). Determining legislative intent can some- 
times be difficult, especially when Congress avails 
itself of more than one enumerated power, against 
which different constitutional standards must be 
applied (28). When the State law involves the ex- 
ercise of its traditional police powers— to protect 
the welfare of its citizens— preemption will occur 
only when there is proof that such was the Fed- 
eral law’s clear purpose (35). If there is insuffi- 
cient evidence that Congress intended to totally 
occupy the field regulated by the respective laws, 
there must be sufficient conflict between them 
for the State law to stand as "an obstacle to ac- 
complishment and execution of the full purposes 
and objectives of Congress” (57). 
Both the State and ALDF argued, first, that ex- 
ercise of a traditional police power was involved 
and, second, that Section 2145(b) of the Animal 
Welfare Act made it sufficiently clear that Con- 
gress intended to establish a cooperative enforce- 
ment scheme rather than a conflicting one, so that 
no conflict or obstacle to attainment of Federal 
objectives was presented (11,66). (Section 2145(b) 
of the act authorizes USD A to cooperate with 
State and local governments carrying out "any 
State, local, or municipal legislation or ordinance 
on the same subject.”) Taub, on the other hand, 
pressed the argument that the State law was in 
conflict with, and an obstacle to, the congressional 
objective of minimizing disruption of research 
(10). In any case, the court decided that the mat- 
ter may be disposed of by the conclusion that the 
Maryland statute simply is inapplicable to Dr. 
Taub (32). 
The decision was not at all surprising, given the 
publicity about the case over 2 years (8,73,88). 
Reaction was also predictable. One professional 
society’s newsletter concluded that the Maryland 
court had "wisely recognized” the fact that the 
"ultimate goal [of biomedical research] is improve- 
ment of the human condition” and claimed that 
the decision provided an "important legal prece- 
dent that affirms the propriety of the use of ani- 
mals in biomedical research” (31). One of the at- 
torneys on the ALDF brief called the court’s 
decision "opaque,” observing that "one manifesta- 
tion of the court's confused reasoning is that at- 
torneys and commentators cannot agree on the 
grounds for the decision” (122). Writing in the 
New England Journal of Medicine , an attorney- 
professor who reviewed the decision and the re- 
sulting commentary reached this sober conclu- 
sion (27): 
It is now necessary for the Congress to con- 
sider whether or not it wishes to address this 
question and to remove the uncertainty in the 
law by making it clear that the Animal Welfare 
Act is intended to be a comprehensive, exclusive 
system of control over the use of animals in 
experimental facilities and activities in interstate 
and foreign commerce and under the National 
Institutes of Health research programs. Without 
such clarification, investigators and operators of 
facilities face the possibility of local criminal 
prosecution, seizure of animals, injunctions to 
close facilities, and cessation of animal investi- 
gations. It should be understood, however, that 
this Federal mandate, if accepted, means that the 
administrative system for monitoring, including 
on-site inspection, must be adequate to insure 
continued compliance with national standards 
for humane treatment. Otherwise, state -level or- 
ganizations with a sincere and reasonable con- 
cern about the care of animals will be justified 
in demanding local enforcement and surveillance 
of biomedical research programs involving lab- 
oratory animals. 
Winkler v. Colorado 
Only one other State court case addresses the 
question of preemption by the Animal Welfare 
Act. In Winkler v. Colorado , that State’s supreme 
court considered a preemptive challenge to Colo- 
