Opinion ID: 108014
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: prior decisions

Text: Our holding does not represent a departure from this Court's precedents. No opinion of this Court has ever explicitly approved the nearby differential. Reliance on United States v. Rock Royal Co-op., 307 U. S. 533 (1939), is misplaced. This Court's refusal to invalidate the payment of a nearby differential to farmers in certain counties named in the New York order must be taken in the context of that action which was initiated by the Government against handlers who refused to obey the regulations. That decision did not repudiate the District Court's finding that the provision was discriminatory as between producers. Id., at 567. The narrow reach of our Rock Royal holding was recognized in Stark v. Wickard, 321 U. S. 288 (1944), where we noted that Rock Royal held the handlers without standing to object to the operation of the producer settlement fund, id., at 308, except as it affected handlers. The Court in Rock Royal went on to reject Rock Royal's contention that the payments placed those handlers without customers in the nearby counties at a competitive disadvantage. Our attention is also drawn to the First Circuit's decision in Green Valley Creamery v. United States, 108 F. 2d 342 (1939). As in Rock Royal, supra, the parties did not have standing to raise the invalidity of the nearby differential. To the extent the First Circuit's view is contrary to our present holding, we disapprove it.