View all Articles
Commentary By Ilya Shapiro

Bringing Home the Constitutional Bacon

Governance Supreme Court

While much attention this Supreme Court term is on affirmative action, a significant political-economy case—National Pork Producers Council v. Ross—will be argued tomorrow. It involves the increasing tendency of state regulations to affect national markets.

In 2018, California voters approved Proposition 12, a far‐​reaching law designed "to prevent animal cruelty by phasing out extreme methods of farm animal confinement." The law requires that all pork, veal, and eggs sold in the state comply with new restrictions on how the animals can be confined. That means pork producers in other states will have to satisfy California law if they want to sell there.

In the wake of the law, various agricultural entities filed lawsuits arguing that Prop 12 unconstitutionally crossed state borders and regulated the entire country. And indeed, the California Department of Food and Agriculture intends to ensure compliance by sending inspectors to out-of-state farms and imposing recordkeeping rules more onerous than those of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Continue reading the full article at Newsweek

______________________

Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of Constitutional Studies at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here

This piece originally appeared in Newsweek