Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt last week asked a federal court to find that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has properly withdrawn an Obama-era rule seeking to further regulate the organic livestock and poultry industry.

In a brief filed Friday with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Schmidt, along with a bipartisan group of attorneys general of 13 other states, asked the court to find that the Organic Livestock and Poultry Practices Rule proposed by the Obama administration in 2016, but which never took effect, was lawfully withdrawn in March 2018.

The attorneys general argue that the rule, if it had taken effect, would have unlawfully sought to regulate animal welfare, which was not authorized by Congress when it enacted the Organic Foods Production Act in 1990 and would have had harmful effects on both the producers and consumers of organic livestock and poultry products.