Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-468_5if6.pdf
Page Number: 4.0

4 

NATIONAL PORK PRODUCERS COUNCIL v. ROSS 

Syllabus 

the Court does not mean to trivialize the role territory and sovereign
boundaries  play  in  the  federal  system;  the  Constitution  takes  great
care to provide rules for fixing and changing state borders.  Art. IV, §3, 
cl. 1.  Courts must sometimes referee disputes about where one State’s 
authority ends and another’s begins—both inside and outside the com-
mercial context.  Indeed, the antidiscrimination principle found in the 
Court’s dormant Commerce Clause cases may well represent one more
effort  to  mediate  competing  claims  of  sovereign  authority  under  our 
horizontal separation of powers.  But none of this means, as petitioners 
suppose,  that  any  question  about  the  ability  of  a  State  to  project  its 
power extraterritorially must yield to an “almost per se” rule under the 
dormant Commerce Clause.  This Court has never before claimed so 
much “ground for judicial supremacy under the banner of the dormant
Commerce  Clause.”  United  Haulers  Assn.,  Inc.  v.  Oneida-Herkimer 
Solid Waste Management Authority, 550 U. S. 330, 346–347.  Pp 8–14. 
(c) Petitioners next point to Pike v. Bruce Church, Inc., 397 U. S. 137, 
which they assert requires a court to at least assess “ ‘the burden im-
posed on interstate commerce’ ” by a state law and prevent its enforce-
ment if the law’s burdens are “ ‘clearly excessive in relation to the pu-
tative local benefits.’ ”  Brief for Petitioners 44.  Petitioners provide a
litany of reasons why they believe the benefits Proposition 12 secures 
for  Californians  do  not  outweigh  the  costs  it  imposes  on  out-of-state 
economic interests. 
  Petitioners overstate the extent to which Pike and its progeny depart
from  the  antidiscrimination  rule  that  lies  at  the  core  of  the  Court’s 
dormant Commerce Clause jurisprudence.  As this Court has previously 
explained, “no clear line” separates the Pike line of cases from core anti-
discrimination  precedents.  General  Motors  Corp.  v.  Tracy,  519  U. S. 
278, 298, n. 12.  If some cases focus on whether a state law discrimi-
nates on its face, the Pike line serves as an important reminder that a 
law’s practical effects may also disclose the presence of a discrimina-
tory purpose.  Pike itself concerned an Arizona order requiring canta-
loupes grown in state to be processed and packed in state.  397 U. S., 
at 138–140.  The Court held that Arizona’s order violated the dormant 
Commerce  Clause,  stressing  that  even  if  that  order  could  be  fairly 
characterized as facially neutral, it “requir[ed] business operations to 
be performed in [state] that could more efficiently be performed else-
where.”  Id., at 145.  The “practical effect[s]” of the order in operation 
thus revealed a discriminatory purpose—an effort to insulate in-state 
processing  and  packaging  businesses  from  out-of-state  competition. 
Id.,  at  140.  While  this  Court  has  left  the  “courtroom  door  open”  to 
challenges premised on “even nondiscriminatory burdens,” Davis, 553 
U. S., at 353, and while “a small number of our cases have invalidated 
state laws . . . that appear to have been genuinely nondiscriminatory,”