Syllabus
(d) The Framers equipped Congress with considerable power to regulate interstate commerce and preempt contrary state laws. See U. S. Const., Art. I, §8, cl. 3; Art. IV, §2. While this Court has inferred an additional judicially enforceable rule against certain state laws adopted even against the backdrop of congressional silence, the Court’s cases also suggest extreme caution is warranted in its exercise. Disavowing reliance on this Court’s core dormant Commerce Clause teachings focused on discriminatory state legislation, petitioners invite the Court to endorse new theories of implied judicial power. They would have the Court recognize an “almost per se” rule against the enforcement of state laws that have “extraterritorial effects”—even though it has long recognized that virtually all state laws create ripple effects beyond their borders. Alternatively, they would have the Court prevent a State from regulating the sale of an ordinary consumer good within its own borders on nondiscriminatory terms—even though the Pike line of cases they invoke has never before yielded such a result. Like the courts that faced this case below, this Court declines both incautious invitations. Pp 27–29.
Justice Gorsuch, joined by Justice Thomas and Justice Barrett, concluded in Part IV–B that, accepting petitioners’ allegations, the Pike balancing task that they propose in this case is one no court is equipped to undertake. Some out-of-state producers who choose to comply with Proposition 12 may incur new costs, while the law serves moral and health interests of some magnitude for in-state residents. In a functioning democracy, those sorts of policy choices—balancing competing, incommensurable goods—belong to the people and their elected representatives. Pp 18–21.
Justice Gorsuch, joined by Justice Thomas, Justice Sotomayor, and Justice Kagan, concluded in Part IV–C that the allegations in the complaint were insufficient as a matter of law to demonstrate a substantial burden on interstate commerce, a showing Pike requires before a court may assess the law’s competing benefits or weigh the two sides against each other, and that the facts pleaded merely allege harm to some producers’ favored “methods of operation” which the Court found insufficient to state a claim in Exxon Corp. v. Governor of Maryland, 437 U. S. 117, 127. Pp 21–25.
