Pigs, morality, and the U.S. Constitution were all in play at the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday.
The case was about more than pigs, of course. It involves how much regulation a state may constitutionally enact when those laws have a significant effect on what happens in other states. Tuesday's case pitted most of the pork producers in the U.S. against a California law enacted by referendum by lopsided margins. The law bans the sale of pork in California when it is produced "inhumanely"--specifically, when the pork comes from pregnant or nursing sows confined in cages so small that the pigs cannot turn around.
California has fewer than 1% of the breeding pigs in the country. The state imports more than 99% of the pork meat it consumes. So the National Pork Producers Council and the American Farm Bureau Federation brought a legal challenge, contending that California's law is unconstitutional.
Now that may not sound like a humdinger to a lot of readers, but the Supreme Court's time limits on arguments seem to have flown out the window of late, and an oral argument that was scheduled for an hour and ten minutes morphed into well over two hours on Tuesday.
Timothy Bishop, representing the pork producers, conceded that California could ban pork products outright in the state, but he maintained that it could not impose a state law that principally affects what happens in other states.
Justice Elena Kagan took issue with drawing lines that way. "If...
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