Court Opinion

ID: 9420296
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:53:49.66791+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:23.911973
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Jackson
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case concerns the power of the State of New York to deny additional facilities to acquire and ship milk in interstate commerce where the grounds of denial are that such limitation upon interstate business will protect and advance local economic interests.
H. P. Hood & Sons, Inc., a Massachusetts corporation, has long distributed milk and its products to inhabitants of Boston. That city obtains about 90% of its fluid milk from states other than Massachusetts. Dairies located in New York State since about 1900 have been among the sources of Boston’s supply, their contribution having varied but during the last ten years approximating 8%. The area in which Hood has been denied an additional license to make interstate purchases has been developed as a part of the Boston milkshed from which both the Hood Company and a competitor have shipped to Boston.
The state courts have held and it is conceded here that Hood’s entire business in New York, present and proposed, is interstate commerce. This Hood has conducted for some time by means of three receiving depots, where it takes raw milk from farmers. The milk is not processed in New York but is weighed, tested and, if necessary, cooled and on the same day shipped as fluid milk to Boston. These existing plants have been operated under license from the State and are not in question here as the State has licensed Hood to continue them. The controversy concerns a proposed additional plant for the same kind of operation at Greenwich, New York.1
*527Article 21 of the Agriculture and Markets Law of New York 2 forbids a dealer to buy milk from producers unless licensed to do so by the Commissioner of Agriculture and Markets. For the license he must pay a substantial fee and furnish a bond to assure prompt payment to producers for milk. Under § 258, the Commissioner may not grant a license unless satisfied “that the applicant is qualified by character, experience, financial responsibility and equipment to properly conduct the proposed business.” 3 The Hood Company concededly has met all the foregoing tests and license for an additional plant was not denied for any failure to comply with these requirements.
*528The Commissioner’s denial was based on further provisions of this section which require him to be satisfied “that the issuance of the license will not tend to a destructive competition in a market already adequately served, and that the issuance of the license is in the public interest.”
Upon the hearing pursuant to the statute, milk dealers competing with Hood as buyers in the area opposed licensing the proposed Greenwich plant. They complained that Hood, by reason of conditions under which it sold in Boston, had competitive advantages under applicable federal milk orders, Boston health regulations, and OPA ceiling prices. There was also evidence of a temporary shortage of supply in the Troy, New York market during the fall and winter of 1945-46. The Commissioner was urged not to allow Hood to compete for additional supplies of milk or to take on producers then delivering to other dealers.
The Commissioner found that Hood, if licensed at Greenwich, would permit its present suppliers, at their option, to deliver at the new plant rather than the old ones and for a substantial number this would mean shorter hauls and savings in delivery costs. The new plant also would attract twenty to thirty producers, some of whose milk Hood anticipates will or may be diverted from other buyers. Other large milk distributors have plants within the general area and dealers serving Troy obtain milk in the locality. He found that Troy was inadequately supplied during the preceding short season.
In denying the application for expanded facilities, the Commissioner states his grounds as follows:
“If applicant is permitted to equip and operate another milk plant in this territory, and to take on producers now delivering to plants other than those which it operates, it will tend to reduce the volume of milk received at the plants which lose those pro*529ducers, and will tend to increase the cost of handling milk in those plants.
“If applicant takes producers now delivering milk to local markets such as Troy, it will have a tendency to deprive such markets of a supply needed during the short season.
“There is no evidence that any producer is without a market for his milk. There is no evidence that any producers not now delivering milk to applicant would receive any higher price, were they to deliver their milk to applicant’s proposed plant.
“The issuance of a license to applicant which would permit it to operate an additional plant, would tend to a destructive competition in a market already adequately served, and would not be in the public interest.”4
Denial of the license was sustained by the Court of Appeals5 over constitutional objections duly urged under the Commerce Clause6 and, because of the importance of the questions involved, we brought the case here by certiorari.7
Production and distribution of milk are so intimately related to public health and welfare that the need for regulation to protect those interests has long been recognized and is, from a constitutional standpoint, hardly controversial. Also, the economy of the industry is so eccentric that economic controls have been found at once necessary and difficult. These have evolved detailed, intricate and comprehensive regulations, including' price-fixing. They have been much litigated but were generally sustained by this Court as within the powers of *530the State over its internal commerce as against the claim that they violated the Fourteenth Amendment.8 Nebbia v. New York, 291 U. S. 502; Hegeman Farms Corp. v. Baldwin, 293 U. S. 163; Borden’s Co. v. Ten Eyck, 297 U. S. 251. But see Mayflower Farms v. Ten Eyck, 297 U. S. 266. As the states extended their efforts to control various phases of export and import also, questions were raised as to limitations on state power under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.
Pennsylvania enacted a law including provisions to protect producers which were very similar to those of this New York Act. A concern which operated a receiving-plant in Pennsylvania from which it shipped milk to the New York City market challenged the Act upon grounds thus defined by this Court: “The respondent contends that the act, if construed to require it to obtain a license, to file a bond for the protection of producers, and to pay the farmers the prices prescribed by the Board, unconstitutionally regulates and burdens interstate commerce.” Milk Board v. Eisenberg Co., 306 U. S. 346, 350. This Court, specifically limiting its judgment to the Act’s provisions with respect to license, bond and regulation of prices to be paid to producers, id. at 352, considered their effect on interstate commerce “incidental and not forbidden by the Constitution, in the absence of regulation by Congress.” Id. at 353.
The present controversy begins where the Eisenberg decision left off. New York’s regulations, designed to assure producers a fair price and a responsible purchaser, and consumers a sanitary and modernly equipped handler, are not challenged here but have been complied with. It is only additional restrictions, imposed for the avowed purpose and with the practical effect of curtailing *531the volume of interstate commerce to aid local economic interests, that are in question here, and no such measures were attempted or such ends sought to be served in the Act before the Court in the Eisenberg case.9
Our decision in a milk litigation most relevant to the present controversy deals with the converse of the present situation. Baldwin v. Seelig, 294 U. S. 511. In that case, New York placed conditions and limitations on the local sale of milk imported from Vermont designed in practical effect to exclude it, while here its order proposes to limit the local facilities for purchase of additional milk so as to withhold milk from export. The State agreed then, as now, that the Commerce Clause prohibits it from directly curtailing movement of milk into or out of the State. But in the earlier case, it contended that the same result could be accomplished by controlling delivery, bottling and sale after arrival, while here it says it can do so by curtailing facilities for its purchase and receipt before it is shipped out. In neither case is the measure supported by health or safety considerations but solely by protection of local economic interests, such as supply for local consumption and limitation of competition. This Court unanimously rejected the State’s contention in the Seelig case and held that the Commerce Clause, even in the absence of congressional action, prohibits such regulations for such ends.
The opinion was by Mr. Justice Cardozo, experienced in the milk problems of New York and favorably disposed toward the efforts of the State to control the industry. Hegeman Farms Corp. v. Baldwin, 293 U. S. 163; Borden’s Co. v. Baldwin, 293 U. S. 194, concurrence at 213; Mayflower Farms v. Ten Eyck, 297 U. S. 266, dissent at 274. It recognized, as do we, broad power in the State to pro*532tect its inhabitants against perils to health or safety, fraudulent traders and highway hazards, even by use of measures which bear adversely upon interstate commerce. But it laid repeated emphasis upon the principle that the State may not promote its own economic advantages by curtailment or burdening of interstate commerce.
The Constitution, said Mr. Justice Cardozo for the unanimous Court, “was framed upon the theory that the peoples of the several states must sink or swim together, and that in the long run prosperity and salvation are in union and not division.”10 He reiterated that the economic objective, as distinguished from any health, safety and fair-dealing purpose of the regulation, was the root of its invalidity. The action of the State would “neutralize the economic consequences of free trade among the states.”* 11 “Such a power, if exerted, will set a barrier to traffic between one state and another as effective as if customs duties, equal to the price differential, had been laid upon the thing transported.”12 “If New York, in order to promote the economic welfare of her farmers, may guard them against competition with the cheaper prices of Vermont, the door has been opened to rivalries and reprisals that were meant to be averted by subjecting commerce between the states to the power of the nation.” 13 And again, “Neither the power to tax nor the police power may be used by the state of destination with the aim and effect of establishing an economic barrier against competition with the products of another state or the labor of its residents. Restrictions so contrived are an unreasonable clog upon the mobility of commerce. They set up what is equivalent to a rampart of customs duties designed to neutralize advantages belonging to the *533place of origin. They are thus hostile in conception as well as burdensome in result.”14
This distinction between the power of the State to shelter its people from menaces to their health or safety and from fraud, even when those dangers emanate from interstate commerce, and its lack of power to retard, burden or constrict the flow of such commerce for their economic advantage, is one deeply rooted in both our history and our law.
When victory relieved the Colonies from the pressure for solidarity that war had exerted, a drift toward anarchy and commercial warfare between states began. “. . . each State would legislate according to its estimate of its own interests, the importance of its own products, and the local advantages or disadvantages of its position in a political or commercial view.” This came “to threaten at once the peace and safety of the Union.” Story, The Constitution, §§ 259, 260. See Fiske, The Critical Period of American History, 144; Warren, The Making of the Constitution, 567. The sole purpose for which Virginia initiated the movement which ultimately produced the Constitution was “to take into consideration the trade of the United States; to examine the relative situations and trade of the said States; to consider how far a uniform system in their commercial regulations may be necessary to their common interest and their permanent harmony” and for that purpose the General Assembly of Virginia in January of 1786 named commissioners and proposed their meeting with those from other states. Documents, Formation of the Union, H. R. Doc. No. 398, 12 H. Docs., 69th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 38.
The desire of the Forefathers to federalize regulation of foreign and interstate commerce stands in sharp contrast to their jealous preservation of the state's power over its *534internal affairs. No other federal power was so universally assumed to be necessary, no other state power was so readily relinquished. There was no desire to authorize federal interference with social conditions or legal institutions of the states. Even the Bill of Rights amendments were framed only as a limitation upon the powers of Congress. The states were quite content with their several and diverse controls over most matters but, as Madison has indicated, “want of a general power over Commerce led to an exercise of this power separately, by the States, wch [sic] not only proved abortive, but engendered rival, conflicting and angry regulations.” 3 Farrand, Records of the Federal Convention, 547.
The necessity of centralized regulation of commerce among the states was so obvious and so fully recognized that the few words of the Commerce Clause were little illuminated by debate. But the significance of the clause was not lost and its effect was immediate and salutary. We are told by so responsible an authority as Mr. Jefferson’s first appointee to this Court that “there was not a State in the Union, in which there did not, at that time, exist a variety of commercial regulations; concerning which it is too much to suppose, that the whole ground covered by those regulations was immediately assumed by actual legislation, under the authority of the Union. But where was the existing statute on this subject, that a State attempted to execute? or by what State was it ever thought necessary to repeal those statutes? By common consent, those laws dropped lifeless from their statute books, for want of the sustaining power, that had been relinquished to Congress.” Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, concurring opinion at 226.
The Commerce Clause is one of the most prolific sources of national power and an equally prolific source of conflict with legislation of the state. While the Constitution vests in Congress the power to regulate commerce among *535the states, it does not say what the states may or may not do in the absence of congressional action, nor how to draw the line between what is and what is not commerce among the states. Perhaps even more than by interpretation of its written word, this Court has advanced the solidarity and prosperity of this Nation by the meaning it has given to these great silences of the Constitution.
Baldwin v. Seelig, 294 U. S. 511, is an explicit, impressive, recent and unanimous condemnation by this Court of economic restraints on interstate commerce for local economic advantage, but it does not stand alone. This Court consistently has rebuffed attempts of states to advance their own commercial interests by curtailing the movement of articles of commerce, either into or out of the state, while generally supporting their right to impose even burdensome regulations in the interest of local health and safety. As most states serve their own interests best by sending their produce to market, the cases in which this Court has been obliged to deal with prohibitions or limitations by states upon exports of articles of commerce are not numerous. However, in a leading case, Oklahoma v. Kansas Natural Gas Co., 221 U. S. 229, the Court denied constitutional validity to a statute by which Oklahoma, by regulation of gas companies and pipe lines, sought to restrict the export of natural gas. The Court held that when a state recognizes an article to be a subject of commerce, it cannot prohibit it from being a subject of interstate commerce; that the right to engage in interstate commerce is not the gift of a state, and that a state cannot regulate or restrain it.
Later West Virginia, by act of the Legislature, undertook regulation of pipe-line companies intended to keep within West Virginia all natural gas there produced that might be required for local needs. This Court held that the State could not accord to its own consumers a pre*536ferred right of purchase over consumers in other states and in language applicable to the case before us now said, “Much of the business is interstate and has grown up through a course of years. West Virginia encouraged and sanctioned the development of that part of the business and has profited greatly by it. Her present effort, rightly understood, is to subordinate that part to the local business within her borders. In other words, it is in effect an attempt to regulate the interstate business to the advantage of the local consumers. But this she may not do.” Pennsylvania v. West Virginia, 262 U. S. 553, at 597, 598.
In Foster Packing Co. v. Haydel, 278 U. S. 1, the Court cited these two cases as authority for the proposition that “A State is without power to prevent privately owned articles of trade from being shipped and sold in interstate commerce on the ground that they are required to satisfy local demands or because they are needed by the people of the State.” 278 U. S. 1, 10. The Court also pointed out that “the purpose [of the statute there involved] is not to retain the shrimp for the use of the people of Louisiana; it is to favor the canning of the meat and the manufacture of bran in Louisiana . . . .” Id., at 13. Thus in the Foster case, and in the companion case Johnson v. Haydel, 278 U. S. 16, although the articles sought to be regulated were shrimp and oysters, which under ordinary conditions might not be considered subjects of commerce, the Court invalidated state enactments attempting to promote local interests at the expense of interstate commerce.
In Parker v. Brown, 317 U. S. 341, California's restrictions on sales of raisins within the State to those who were there processing and packing them were attacked as invalid because approximately 95% of the crop would find its way into interstate commerce after processing and packing. However, the Court said: “. . . no case has *537gone so far as to hold that a state could not license or otherwise regulate the sale of articles within the state because the buyer, after processing and packing them, will, in the normal course of business, sell and ship them in interstate commerce. . . . The regulation is thus applied to transactions wholly intrastate before the raisins are ready for shipment in interstate commerce.” 317 U. S. 341, at 361. This regulation of sale to local processors was distinguished from those which were held invalid in Lemke v. Farmers Grain Co., 258 U. S. 50, and Shafer v. Farmers Grain Co., 268 U. S. 189, because the regulation in the earlier cases was “of the business of those who purchaséd grain within the state for immediate shipment out of it.” Ibid. In those cases, the regulation was of interstate commerce itself. Another element in the Parker case which led the Court to sustain the California regulation was that it was one which the policy of Congress was to aid and encourage, and the Secretary of Agriculture had approved the State program by loans.
The most recent case of this kind, Toomer v. Witsell, 334 U. S. 385, involved, among other things, a South Carolina requirement that the owners of shrimp boats fishing off its shores dock at a South Carolina port and unload, pack and stamp their catch with a tax stamp before shipping or transporting it to another state. It was considered that the effect of this section of the statute was to divert to South Carolina employment and business which might otherwise go to other states, and the Court pointed out that “the necessary tendency of the statute is to impose an artificial rigidity on the economic pattern of the industry.” 334 U. S. 385, 403-404. It was held that the Commerce Clause was violated by such a provision.
This principle that our economic unit is the Nation, which alone has the gamut of powers necessary to control of the economy, including the vital power of erecting *538customs barriers against foreign competition, has as its corollary that the states are not separable economic units. As the Court said in Baldwin v. Seelig, 294 U. S. 541, 527, “what is ultimate is the principle that one state in its dealings with another may not place itself in a position of economic isolation.” In so speaking it but followed the principle that the state may not use its admitted powers to protect the health and safety of its people as a basis for suppressing competition. In Buck v. Kuykendall, 267 U. S. 307, the Court struck down a state act because, in the language of Mr. Justice Brandéis, “Its primary purpose is not regulation with a view to safety or to conservation of the highways, but the prohibition of competition.” The same argument here advanced, that limitation of competition would itself contribute to safety and conservation, and therefore indirectly serve an end permissible to the State, was there declared “not sound.” 267 U. S. 307, 315. It is no better here. This Court has not only recognized this disability of the state to isolate its own economy as a basis for striking down parochial legislative policies designed to do so, but it has recognized the incapacity of the state to protect its own inhabitants from competition as a reason for sustaining particular exercises of the commerce power of Congress to reach matters in which states were so disabled. Cf. Steward Machine Co. v. Davis, 301 U. S. 548; Carmichael v. Southern Coal Co., 301 U. S. 495; Helvering v. Davis, 301 U. S. 619.
The material success that has come to inhabitants of the states which make up this federal free trade unit has been the most impressive in the history of commerce, but the established interdependence of the states only emphasizes the necessity of protecting interstate movement of goods against local burdens and repressions. We need only consider the consequences if each of the few states that produce copper, lead, high-grade iron ore, *539timber, cotton, oil or gas should decree that industries located in that state shall have priority. What fantastic rivalries and dislocations and reprisals would ensue if such practices were begun! Or suppose that the field of discrimination and retaliation be industry. May Michigan provide that automobiles cannot be taken out of that State until local dealers’ demands are fully met? Would she not have every argument in the favor of such a statute that can be offered in support of New York’s limiting sales of milk for out-of-state shipment to protect the economic interests of her competing dealers and local consumers? Could Ohio then pounce upon the rubber-tire industry, on which she has a substantial grip, to retaliate for Michigan’s auto monopoly?
Our system, fostered by the Commerce Clause, is that every farmer and every craftsman shall be encouraged to produce by the certainty that he will have free access to every market in the Nation, that no home embargoes will withhold his exports, and no foreign state will by customs duties or regulations exclude them. Likewise, every consumer may look to the free competition from every producing area in the Nation to protect him from exploitation by any. Such was the vision of the Founders; such has been the doctrine of this Court which has given it reality.
The State, however, insists that denial of the license for a new plant does not restrict or obstruct interstate commerce, because petitioner has been licensed at its other plants without condition or limitation as to the quantities it may purchase. Hence, it is said, all that has been denied petitioner is a local convenience — that of being able to buy and receive at Greenwich quantities of milk it is free to buy at Eagle Bridge and Salem. It suggests that, by increased efficiency or enlarged capacity at its other plants, petitioner might sufficiently increase its supply through those facilities.
*540The weakness of this contention is that a buyer has to buy where there is a willing seller, and the peculiarities of the milk business necessitate location of a receiving and cooling station for nearby producers. The Commissioner has not made and there is nothing to persuade us that he could have made findings that petitioner can obtain such additional supplies through its existing facilities; indeed he found that “applicant has experienced some difficulty during the flush season because of the inability of the plant facilities to handle the milk by 9:00 a. m.,” the time its receipt is required by Boston health authorities unless it is cooled by the farmer before delivery, and a substantial part of it is not.
But the argument also asks us to assume that the Commissioner’s order will not operate in the way he found that it would as a reason for making it. He found that petitioner, at its new plant, would divert milk from the plants of some other large handlers in the vicinity, which plants “can handle more milk.” This competition he did not approve. He also found it would tend to deprive local markets of needed supplies during the short season. In the face of affirmative findings that the proposed plant would increase petitioner’s supply, we can hardly be asked to assume that denial of the license will not deny petitioner access to such added supplies. While the state power is applied in this case to limit expansion by a handler of milk who already has been allowed some purchasing facilities, the argument for doing so, if sustained, would be equally effective to exclude an entirely new foreign handler from coming into the State to purchase.
The State, however, contends that such restraint or obstruction as its order imposes on interstate commerce does not violate the Commerce Clause because the State regulation coincides with, supplements and is part of the federal regulatory scheme. This contention that Congress has taken possession of “the field” but shared it with *541the State, it is to be noted, reverses the contention usually made in comparable cases, which is that Congress has not fully occupied the field and hence the State may fill the void.
Congress, as a part of its Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act,15 authorizes the Secretary of Agriculture to issue orders regulating the handling of several agricultural products, including milk, when they are within the reach of its commerce power. As to milk, it sets up, § 8c (5), 7 U. S. C. § 608c (5), a rather complicated system of fixing prices to be paid to producers through equalization pools which distribute the total value of all milk sold in a specified market among the producers supplying that market. This federal regulation was sustained and explained in United States v. Rock Royal Co-operative, 307 U. S. 533; H. P. Hood & Sons v. United States, 307 U. S. 588; see also Stark v. Wickard, 321 U. S. 288. Section 10 of the Federal Act16 also authorizes federal officials to engage in conferences, joint hearings and cooperation with the state authorities.
New York State, in its present and antecedent statutes, has authorized its state authorities to confer with federal officials on milk control problems17 and a series of conferences and joint hearings have been held. The two authorities formalized their collaboration in 1938 by signing a “Memorandum of the Principles of Cooperation to be Observed in the Formulation and Administration of Complementary Orders for Milk for Marketing Areas Located Within the State of New York to be Issued Concurrently by the Secretary of Agriculture and the Commissioner of Agriculture and Markets.”
*542But no federal approval or responsibility for the challenged features of this order appears in any of these provisions or arrangements. The “memorandum of the principles of cooperation” relates only to marketing areas in New York, while the marketing area served by Hood is entirely outside of New York and is controlled by Federal Order No. 4, applicable to the greater Boston market.18 Federal Order No. 27 is applicable to the New York metropolitan market19 and it is as to this order that the State of New York'is recognized by the memorandum as entitled to consultation. There is no such financial support as was given in Parker v. Brown, 317 U. S. 341.
The Congressional regulation contemplates and permits a wide latitude in which the State may exercise its police power over the local facilities for handling milk. We assume, though it is not necessary to decide, that the Federal Act does not preclude a state from placing restrictions and obstructions in the way of interstate commerce for the ends and purposes always held permissible under the Commerce Clause. But here the challenge is only to a denial of facilities for interstate commerce upon the sole and specific grounds that it will subject others to competition and take supplies needed locally, an end, as we have shown, always held to be precluded by the Commerce Clause. We have no doubt that Congress in the national interest could prohibit or curtail shipments of milk in interstate commerce, unless and until local demands are met. Nor do we know of any reason why Congress may not, if it deems it in the national interest, authorize the states to place similar restraints on movement of articles of commerce. And the provisions looking to state cooperation may be sufficient to warrant the state in imposing regulations approved by the federal au*543thorities, even if they otherwise might run counter to the decisions that coincidence is as fatal as conflict when Congress acts. See Bethlehem, Steel Co. v. New York State Labor Relations Board, 330 U. S. 767. It is, of course, a quite different thing if Congress through its agents finds such restrictions upon interstate commerce advance the national welfare, than if a locality is held free to impose them because it, judging its own cause, finds them in the interest of local prosperity.
When it is considered that the Federal Act was passed expressly to overcome “disruption of the orderly exchange of commodities in interstate commerce” and conditions found to “burden and obstruct the normal channels of interstate commerce,” 7 U. S. C. § 601, it seems clear that we can not sustain the State’s argument that its restrictions here involved supplement and further the federal scheme.
Moreover, we can hardly assume that the challenged provisions of this order advance the federal scheme of regulation because Congress forbids inclusion of such a policy in a federal milk order. Section 8c (5) (G) of the Act provides:
“No marketing agreement or order applicable to milk and its products in any marketing area shall prohibit or in any manner limit, in the case of the products of milk, the marketing in that area of any milk or product thereof produced in any production area in the United States.” 20
While there may be difference of opinion as to whether this authorizes the Federal Order to limit, so long as it does not prohibit, interstate shipment of milk, see Bailey Farm Dairy Co. v. Anderson, 157 F. 2d 87, 96; Bailey Farm Dairy Co. v. Jones, 61 F. Supp. 209, 221 — a question upon which we express no opinion — it is clear *544that the policy of the provision is inconsistent with the State’s contention that it may, in its own interest, impose such a limitation as a coincident or supplement to federal regulation.
The only federal restriction of handlers’ purchases from new producers, found in §8c(5) (B), authorizes inclusion, in orders concerning milk or milk products, of a clause providing that for deliveries made during the first sixty days a new producer shall be paid only the minimum price applicable for milk of the particular use classification, subject to adjustments not relevant here.21 This provision was included in the 1935 amendment,22 “to prevent assaults upon the price structure by the sporadic importation of milk from new producing areas, while permitting the orderly and natural expansion of the area supplying any market . . . .” S. Rep. No. 1011, 74th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 11. And, it was added, “this is the only limitation upon the entry of new producers — wherever located — into a market, and it can remain effective only for the specified . . . period.” Ibid. The bill originally provided for a ninety-day minimum price period but in conference the less restrictive sixty-day period was adopted. H. R. Rep. No. 1757, 74th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 21.23
These sections and reports indicate that it is the deliberate policy of the Congress to prevent federal officers from placing barriers in the way of the interstate flow of milk. While a statutory prohibition against federal *545interference with certain phases of it may not always imply that the state too is precluded, it is obvious that a state limitation on export for the benefit of its own consumers is not authorized by this Federal Act. The purpose as expressed in § 1, 7 U. S. C. § 601, is to avoid conditions which burden and obstruct the normal channels of interstate commerce. The object of the federal program to raise and stabilize the price of products was to stimulate interstate commerce. The order of the Commissioner avows itself to have the opposite effect. It can claim neither federal sponsorship nor congressional sanction.
Since the statute as applied violates the Commerce Clause and is not authorized by federal legislation pursuant to that Clause, it cannot stand. The judgment is reversed and the cause remanded for proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

 The New York Court of Appeals described the geographical situation with respect to petitioner’s present and proposed plants *527as follows: “The extension would have permitted petitioner to operate a milk receiving plant at Greenwich, New York, in addition to petitioner’s other similar plants already licensed and operating at Eagle Bridge, Salem and Norfolk, in this State. Eagle Bridge is in Rensselaer County and Salem and Greenwich are in Washington County, Rensselaer County being adjacent to Washington County on the south, and both these counties being on the easterly edge of New York State, bordering on Massachusetts and Vermont. Petitioner’s Norfolk establishment is in St. Lawrence County in another part of New York State, and serves a different area and a different group of milk producers. The present Eagle Bridge and Salem depots, however, are quite close together and the proposed Greenwich plant, for which a license has been refused, is ten miles from Salem and twelve miles from Eagle Bridge.” 297 N. Y. 209, 212; 78 N. E. 2d 476, 477.

 Laws of 1934, c. 126.

 Section 258-c provides in pertinent part as follows:
“No license shall be granted to a person not now engaged in business as a milk dealer except for the continuation of a now existing business, and no license shall be granted to authorize the extension of an existing business by the operation of an additional plant or other new or additional facility, unless the commissioner is satisfied that the applicant is qualified by character, experience, financial responsibility and equipment to properly conduct the proposed business, that the issuance of the license will not tend to a destructive competition in a market already adequately served, and that the issuance of the license is in the public interest. . . .”

 This finding follows the statutory language. See Note 3.

 297 N. Y. 209, 78 N. E. 2d 476.

 U. S. Const., Art. I, §8, cl. 3, granting Congress power “To regulate Commerce . . . among the several States ...”

 335 U. S. 808.

 “. . . nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

 The Court said: “The Commonwealth [of Pennsylvania] does not essay to regulate or to restrain the shipment of the respondent’s milk into New York 306 U. S. 346, 352.

 294 U. S. 511,523.

 Id., 526.

 Id., 521.

 Id., 522.

 Id., 527.

 Act of June 3, 1937, c. 296, 50 Stat. 246, as amended, 7 U. S. C. § 601 et seq.

 7 U. S. C. § 610 (i).

 See Laws of 1937, c. 798, § 258-n.

 7 C. F. R. §§ 904-904.202 (1947 Supp.).

 7 C. F. R. §§927-927.202 (1947 Supp.).

 7 U. S. C. § 608c (5) (G).

 See 7 U. S. C. § 608c (5) (B).

 The Act of August 24, 1935, 49 Stat. 750, amended the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933, 48 Stat. 31. Section 8c first appeared in the 1935 Act, which was amended and reenacted by the 1937 Act, 50 Stat. 246, cited in note 15.

 See also H. R. Rep. No. 1241, 74th Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 7-11. And see debates at 79 Cong. Rec. 9461-63; 9572-73; 9602-04; 11134-41; and 13022.