Justices asked lawyers for agriculture groups challenging a California law about treatment of pigs whether they are overstating the effect on interstate business, but also pressed the California solicitor general to explain why the law wouldn’t encourage other states to use commerce to advance political views.
The Supreme Court justices heard arguments Tuesday in the National Pork Producers Council and the American Farm Bureau Federation’s challenge that California’s voter-approved Proposition 12 upends a regulatory balance that justices established 52 years ago.
Edwin Kneedler, the deputy U.S solicitor general, urged the court to overturn a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision upholding Proposition 12, a ballot measure approved in 2018 that requires pork products sold in California to be from pigs born to an adult female kept in a 24-square-foot space under conditions that allow the sow to turn around without touching her enclosure.
