Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-468_5if6.pdf
Page Number: 31.0

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

25 

Opinion of the Court 
Opinion of GORSUCH, J. 

App. to Pet. for Cert. 335a; see also Brief for Agricultural
and Resource Economics Professors as Amici Curiae 15, 23 
(suggesting negligible effect on out-of-state prices for con-
sumers  not  interested  in  Proposition  12-compliant  pork).
Further experience may yield further facts.  But the facts 
pleaded in this complaint merely allege harm to some pro-
ducers’ favored “methods of operation.”   Exxon, 437 U. S., 
at 127.  A substantial harm to interstate commerce remains 
nothing more than a speculative possibility.  Ibid. 

D 
THE CHIEF JUSTICE’s concurrence in part and dissent in
part  (call  it  “the  lead  dissent”)  offers  a  contrasting  view. 
Correctly, it begins by rejecting petitioners’ “almost per se” 
rule  against  laws  with  extraterritorial  effects.    Post,  at  1. 
And  correctly,  it  disapproves  reading  Pike  to  endorse  a 
“freewheeling  judicial  weighing  of  benefits  and  burdens.” 
Post, at 2.  But for all it gets right, in other respects it goes 
astray.  In places, the lead dissent seems to advance a read-
ing of Pike that would permit judges to enjoin the enforce-
ment  of  any  state  law  restricting  the  sale  of  an  ordinary 
consumer good if the law threatens an “ ‘excessive’ ” “har[m] 
to the interstate market” for that good.  Post, at 4–9.  It is 
an  approach  that  would  go  much  further  than  our  prece-
dents  permit.  So  much  further,  in  fact,  that  it  isn’t  clear 
what separates the lead dissent’s approach from others it 
purports to reject.

Consider an example.  Today, many States prohibit the
sale of horsemeat for human consumption.  See Cavel Int’l, 
Inc. v. Madigan, 500 F. 3d 551, 552–555 (CA7 2007).  But 
these prohibitions “har[m] the interstate market” for horse-
meat  by  denying  outlets  for  its  sale.    Not  only  that,  they
distort the  market for  animal products more  generally by
pressuring horsemeat manufacturers to transition to differ-
ent products, ones they can lawfully sell nationwide.  Under 
the  lead  dissent’s  test,  all  it  would  take  is  one  complaint