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Page Number: 32.0

26 

NATIONAL PORK PRODUCERS COUNCIL v. ROSS 

Opinion of the Court 
Opinion of GORSUCH, J. 

from  an  unhappy  out-of-state  producer  and—presto—the
Constitution would protect the sale of horsemeat.  Just find 
a judge anywhere in the country who considers the burden 
to producers “excessive.”  Post, at 9.  The same would go for 
all manner of consumer products currently banned by some
States  but  not  by  others—goods  ranging  from  fireworks, 
see, e.g., Mass. Gen. Laws Ann., ch. 148, §39 (2020), to sin-
gle-use plastic grocery bags, see, e.g., Me. Rev. Stat. Ann., 
Tit.  38,  §§1611(2)(A),  (4)  (2022).    Rather  than  respecting
federalism,  a  rule  like  that  would  require  any  consumer 
good available for sale in one State to be made available in 
every State.  In the process, it would essentially replicate 
under Pike’s banner petitioners’ “almost per se” rule against
state laws with extraterritorial effects. 

Seeking  a  way  around  that  problem,  the  lead  dissent 
stumbles  into  another.  It  suggests  that  the  burdens  of 
Proposition 12 are particularly “substantial” because Cali-
fornia’s  law  “carr[ies]  implications  for  producers  as  far 
flung as Indiana and North Carolina.”  Post, at 7–10.  Why
is that so?  JUSTICE KAVANAUGH’s solo concurrence in part
and dissent in part says the quiet part aloud:  California’s 
market is so lucrative that almost any in-state measure will 
influence  how  out-of-state  profit-maximizing  firms  choose 
to operate.  Post, at 4–5.  But if that makes all the differ-
ence,  it  means  voters  in  States  with  smaller  markets  are 
constitutionally entitled to greater authority to regulate in-
state sales than voters in States with larger markets.  So 
much for the Constitution’s “fundamental principle of equal
sovereignty  among  the  States.”  Shelby  County  v.  Holder, 
570 U. S. 529, 544 (2013) (internal quotation marks omit-
ted).

The most striking feature of both dissents, however, may 
be  another  one.  They  suggest  that,  in  assessing  a  state
law’s burdens under Pike, courts should take into account 
not just economic harms but also all manner of “derivative 
harms”  to  out-of-state  interests.    Post,  at  5–6  (opinion  of