Page:NPPC v. Ross.pdf/46

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NATIONAL PORK PRODUCERS COUNCIL v. ROSS

Opinion of Roberts, C. J.

State.” Id., at 145. The Court in Pike found both compliance costs and consequential market harms cognizable in determining whether the law at issue impermissibly burdened interstate commerce.

The derivative harms we have long considered in this context are in no sense “noneconomic.” Ante, at 27 (opinion of Gorsuch, J.). Regulations that “aggravate … the problem of highway accidents,” Kassel, 450 U. S., at 674, or “slow the movement of goods,” Rice, 434 U. S., at 445, impose economic burdens, even if those burdens may be difficult to quantify and may not arise immediately. Our cases provide no license to chalk up every economic harm—no matter how derivative—to a mere cost of compliance.

Nor can the foregoing cases be dismissed because they either involved the instrumentalities of transportation or a state law born of discriminatory purpose. As discussed above, we have applied Pike to state laws that neither concerned transportation nor discriminated against commerce. See Edgar, 457 U. S., at 643–646. The Pike balance may well come out differently when it comes to interstate transportation, an area presenting a strong interest in “national uniformity.” Tracy, 519 U. S., at 298, n. 12. But the error below does not concern a particular balancing of interests under Pike; it concerns how to analyze the burden on interstate commerce in the first place.

B

As in our prior cases, petitioners here allege both compliance costs and consequential harms to the interstate market. With respect to compliance costs, petitioners allege that Proposition 12 demands significant capital expenditures for farmers who wish to sell into California. “Producers … will need to spend” between $290 and $348 million “of additional capital in order to reconstruct their sow housing and overcome the productivity loss that Proposition 12 imposes.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 214a. All told, compliance