Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-468_5if6.pdf
Page Number: 5.0

Cite as:  598 U. S. ____ (2023) 

5 

Syllabus 

Tracy, 519 U. S., at 298, n. 12,  petitioners’ claim about Proposition 12 
falls well outside Pike’s heartland.  Pp 15–18. 

(d) The Framers equipped Congress with considerable power to reg-
ulate interstate commerce and preempt contrary state laws.  See U. S. 
Const., Art. I, §8, cl. 3; Art. IV, §2.  While this Court has inferred an 
additional  judicially  enforceable  rule  against  certain  state  laws 
adopted even against the backdrop of congressional silence, the Court’s
cases also suggest extreme caution is warranted in its exercise.  Disa-
vowing reliance on this Court’s core dormant Commerce Clause teach-
ings focused on discriminatory state legislation, petitioners invite the 
Court to endorse new theories of implied judicial power.  They would
have the Court recognize an “almost per se” rule against the enforce-
ment of state laws that have “extraterritorial effects”—even though it 
has long recognized that virtually all state laws create ripple effects 
beyond their borders.  Alternatively, they would have the Court pre-
vent  a  State  from  regulating  the  sale  of  an  ordinary  consumer  good 
within its own borders on nondiscriminatory terms—even though the 
Pike line of cases they invoke has never before yielded such a result. 
Like the courts that faced this case below, this Court declines both in-
cautious invitations.  Pp 27–29.

JUSTICE GORSUCH, joined by JUSTICE THOMAS and JUSTICE BARRETT, 
concluded  in  Part  IV–B  that,  accepting  petitioners’  allegations,  the 
Pike balancing task that they propose in this case  is one no court is 
equipped  to  undertake.  Some  out-of-state  producers  who  choose  to 
comply with Proposition 12 may incur new costs, while the law serves 
moral and health interests of some magnitude for in-state residents.
In  a  functioning  democracy,  those  sorts  of  policy  choices—balancing
competing,  incommensurable  goods—belong  to  the  people  and  their 
elected representatives.  Pp 18–21.

JUSTICE GORSUCH, joined by JUSTICE THOMAS, JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, 
and JUSTICE KAGAN, concluded in Part IV–C that the allegations in the 
complaint were insufficient as a matter of law to demonstrate a sub-
stantial burden on interstate commerce, a showing Pike requires be-
fore a court may assess the law’s competing benefits or weigh the two 
sides  against  each  other,  and  that  the  facts  pleaded  merely  allege 
harm  to  some  producers’  favored  “methods  of  operation”  which  the 
Court found insufficient to state a claim in Exxon Corp. v. Governor of 
Maryland, 437 U. S. 117, 127.  Pp 21–25.

JUSTICE GORSUCH, joined by JUSTICE THOMAS and JUSTICE BARRETT, 
concluded in Part IV–D that petitioners have not asked the Court to 
treat  putative  harms  to  out-of-state  animal  welfare  or  other noneco-
nomic interests as freestanding harms cognizable under the dormant
Commerce Clause, and in any event that the Court’s decisions author-
izing claims alleging “burdens on commerce,”  Davis, 553 U. S., at 353,