The strongest voice on California’s side appeared to be Justice Neil M. The tenor of the two-hour argument suggested the court will rule for the pork producers. “We live in a divided country,” Justice Elena Kagan said, “and the balkanization that the framers were concerned about is surely present today.” “California voters chose to pay higher prices to serve their local interest in refusing to provide a market to products they viewed as morally objectionable and potentially unsafe,” he said.īut he ran into objections from both liberal and conservative justices who foresaw a threat of similar measures. Michael Mongan defended the law on the grounds that it applied only to pork sold in the state and not elsewhere. “It invites conflict and retaliation and threatens the balkanization of the national economic union.”Ĭalifornia Solicitor Gen. California’s Proposition 12 “imposes a substantial burden on interstate commerce,” said Deputy Solicitor Gen. The Biden administration joined the case on the side of the pork producers and stressed a similar argument. He argued that if California’s law is upheld, Oregon could require that products sold there from other states must be made by workers who were paid the state’s higher minimum wage, or Texas could limit sales to products made entirely by lawful U.S. “We will not have a national economic union if California can impose its moral views this way.” “A state may not project its legislation into other states,” said Chicago attorney Timothy Bishop, representing the National Pork Producers Council.
They noted that more than 99% of the pork sold in California comes from other states. They argued that Proposition 12, which was approved by California voters in 2018, is unconstitutional because its “practical effect” would be to force hog farmers across the nation to make costly changes in how they raise and confine their breeding pigs. Pork producers based in the Midwest challenged the California ballot measure that would ban the sale of pork in the state if it originated with the extreme confining of breeding pigs in narrow metal cages. The Supreme Court justices sounded wary Tuesday of California’s animal welfare law and its protections for breeding pigs, warning it could set off a wave of state laws that put a wide array of restrictions on products moving nationwide.
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