WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a challenge to a California law that seeks to combat animal cruelty by requiring that pork sold in the state come from breeding pigs housed in spaces where they can roam freely .
The law, Proposition 12, a 2018 ballot measure passed by more than 60 percent of state voters, was challenged by two trade groups who said it disrupted interstate commerce and sound business practices.
“Almost no sow farmers in the country meet Proposition 12 requirements for sow housing, and most believe those requirements would harm their animals, employees and operations,” said attorneys for the two groups — the National Pork Producers Council and the American Farm Bureau Federation judges in their request for review.
In a brief request for judges to dismiss the trade groups’ appeal, California Attorney General Rob Bonta said his state has the right to regulate sales there, adding that the law is “completely indifferent to manner.” how products sold in other states are valued or produced.”
He added that “a number of pork producers and suppliers have publicly announced that they have taken steps to ensure their products continue to be lawfully sold in California.” Those suppliers include Tyson and Hormel, Mr. Bonta wrote in his brief in the case National Pork Producers Council v. Ross, No. 21-468.
Attorneys from the Humane Society of the United States and other animal welfare groups who intervened to defend the law wrote that it was intended to “end cruel and unsanitary conditions that threaten the health of California consumers” and that “Producers may freely sell products from livestock raised in contravention of Proposition 12 standards outside of California.”
A unanimous three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco rejected the argument that the law was invalid because of its out-of-state effects. “State laws that govern only conduct within the state, including the sale of products within the state, have no undue extraterritorial implications,” Judge Sandra S. Ikuta wrote for the panel.
The law prohibits the sale of most pork in California unless the pig it came from was born to a sow kept within 24 square feet. But most sows across the country are kept in much smaller pens.
“These pens,” wrote the groups challenging the California law, “are about 14 square feet of space and — for reasons of sanitation, safety, and animal welfare and husbandry — do not allow the sow to roll over.”
The size of the California market, the groups added, makes it impossible to ignore the state’s requirements. “Californiaans account for 13 percent of the nation’s pork consumption, but rarely raise pigs,” their commission reads. “The huge cost of complying with Proposition 12 falls almost entirely on out-of-state farmers.”
In practice, they said, because California imports almost all of the pork sold in the state, the law seeks to regulate producers in places like Minnesota and Iowa.