Page:NPPC v. Ross.pdf/49

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Cite as: 598 U. S. ____ (2023)
9

Opinion of Roberts, C. J.

interstate firms,” ibid.—such that they constitute a substantial burden under Pike. At the very least, the harms alleged by petitioners are categorically different from the cost of installing $30 mudguards, Bibb, 359 U. S., at 525, or of constructing a $200,000 cantaloupe packing facility, Pike, 397 U. S., at 140.

Justice Gorsuch asks what separates my approach from the per se extraterritoriality rule I reject. Ante, at 25. It is the difference between mere cross-border effects and broad impact requiring, in this case, compliance even by producers who do not wish to sell in the regulated market. And even then, we only invalidate a regulation if that burden proves “clearly excessive in relation to the putative local benefits.” Pike, 397 U. S., at 142. Adhering to that established approach in this case would not convert the inquiry into a per se rule against extraterritorial regulation.

Rather than analyze petitioners’ alleged harms to the interstate market on their own terms, the Ninth Circuit reasoned that the “crux” of the complaint is “the cost of compliance with Proposition 12.” 6 F. 4th, at 1033. Such “cost increases,” the panel below concluded, “do not qualify as a substantial burden to interstate commerce.” Ibid. Those statements ignore the industry-wide harms discussed above.

The panel below itself recognized that petitioners “plausibly alleged that Proposition 12 will have dramatic upstream effects and require pervasive changes to the pork production industry nationwide.” Ibid. Yet it nevertheless reduced the myriad harms detailed by petitioners in their complaint to so-called “compliance costs” and wrote them off as independently insufficient to state a claim under Pike. Our precedents do not support such an approach. A majority of the Court agrees that—were it possible to balance benefits and burdens in this context—petitioners have plausibly stated a substantial burden against interstate