Supreme Court rejects challenge to California pork law

The Supreme Court rejected a challenge from pork producers to a California animal cruelty law, ruling that the case was properly dismissed by lower courts. The law requires pork producers to provide more space for breeding pigs if they want to sell in the state.

Voters in California approved Proposition 12 in 2018. The Iowa-based National Pork Producers Council and the American Farm Bureau Federation sued, saying the law would force them to change their practices even though pork is produced almost entirely outside California.

The pork producers argued that 72% of farmers use individual pens for sows, and that even farmers who house sows in larger group pens do not provide the space California would require. The producers estimated that complying with the law could cost the pork industry up to $350 million.

Even the Biden administration urged the court to side with pork producers, arguing that the law has “thrown a giant wrench” into the nation’s pork market. Despite this, the Supreme Court affirmed in its May 11 opinion on the California pork law that “companies that choose to sell products in various states must normally comply with the laws of those various states.”

“No state may use its laws to discriminate purposefully against out-of-state economic interests. But the pork producers do not suggest that California’s law offends this principle,” Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch said in the court’s opinion. “Instead, they invite us to fashion two new and more aggressive constitutional restrictions on the ability of States to regulate goods sold within their borders. We decline that invitation.”