Kansas asks U.S. Supreme Court to let states limit how long trains can block crossings

Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt has joined 18 other state attorneys general in asking that the U.S. Supreme Court restore the rights states and local governments once had to regulate how long trains can block railroad crossings.

Absent that power, the public is put at risk, the attorneys general say in their brief. Countless people have died when emergency vehicles were delayed at rail crossings, The Star reported this month in an investigation of railroad safety lapses.

The problem has only gotten worse in recent years for many communities across the country, The Star reported, as the rail industry’s practices have made blocked crossings more common.

The group led by Indiana Attorney General Theodore E. Rokita requests that the high court hear Ohio’s appeal of that state’s supreme court decision this year invalidating the Ohio law that allowed authorities to levy fines on railroads when their trains blocked a crossing for more than five minutes.

The Ohio Supreme Court said that law was preempted by federal law and could not be enforced.

Several state and federal courts in recent years also have negated the authority of other states and local governments to enforce their blocked crossings laws. Those courts have ruled that only the federal government can regulate train movements, but Congress has failed to pass any laws limiting how long trains can block a crossing.

The brief that the attorneys general filed in support of Ohio’s appeal says state and local regulations are needed because the lack of rules puts public safety at risk.

“Absent enforceable anti-blocking statutes and ordinances, railroads have little incentive to remove idle trains from grade crossings expeditiously,” the brief said. “The results can be tragic, as incidents across the country demonstrate.”

One of those incidents, The Star reported, happened in September 2021 near Leggett, Texas.

K’Twon Franklin was just 11 weeks old when his mother, a nurse, found him unresponsive a half hour after putting him down for a nap. Finding the crossing blocked to the dead-end road where the family lived, an EMT climbed through a parked train to get the child and carry him back to the ambulance.

But before he could get back across the tracks to the vehicle, the train had begun to move. Nearly an hour passed between the 911 call and when the baby was finally loaded into the ambulance. K’Twon was pronounced dead in the hospital three days later.

K’Twon’s story was also one of the examples cited in the brief filed by Schmidt and the others. In a news release, Schmidt said Kansas is among 37 states with blocked crossings laws that, as The Star found, are effectively unenforceable. The law that Kansas has had on the books since 1897 was struck down in 2018 by the Kansas Court of Appeals.

The state of Ohio argues in its appeal that lower courts misinterpreted a federal statute passed in 1995 that dissolved the Interstate Commerce Commission and transferred much of its authority to a new agency, the Surface Transportation Board.

The Supreme Court declined to hear a similar appeal from the state of Oklahoma last year, but Ohio officials believe they have tweaked their arguments enough to get the court’s consideration.

Railroad unions have also filed a brief in support of Ohio’s appeal. CSX Transportation, the railroad that successfully sought to have Ohio’s law thrown out, has asked the court to give it until the middle of next month to file a reply.