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Originally posted by ZombieJesus
reply to post by ErtaiNaGia
Well, good for Virginia....
VA Spokesman Mark Ballesteros said Monday that federal protections of veterans' treatment records take precedence. The agency's lawyers had been studying the New York statute, which passed in January.
"Federal laws safeguarding the confidentiality of veterans' treatment records do not authorize VA mental-health professionals to comply with this New York State law," Ballesteros said in a prepared statement. "Under the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, federal laws take precedence over conflicting state and local laws."
A clear case of where federal law trumps a conflicting state law.
Originally posted by seabag
reply to post by cripmeister
A clear case of where federal law trumps a conflicting state law.
Please tell me why this administration is trying to bully federal agencies into going against federal law. Do you think for a minute that NY isn't getting its direction from this White House? If that isn't the case then why hasn't NY pushed this issue over the last 237 years??
This shows the absolute arrogance of this administration IMO.
What say you?
I don't think Cuomo and Bloomberg are getting direction from the White House. Do you think they were directed to introduce the large soda ban too? No, I think they are perfectly capable of coming up with these ideas all by themselves.
In this case its a good thing. Sadly, the outrage isn't coming from DC or the justice dept but from a few people within the VA (likely veterans themselves).
Luckily there are checks in place (federal law in your op) to keep these people from overstepping their authority.