United Haulers Ass'n, Inc. v. Oneida-Herkimer Solid Waste Management Auth.

From Conservapedia

United Haulers Ass'n, Inc. v. Oneida-Herkimer Solid Waste Management Auth., 2007 U.S. LEXIS 4746 (Apr. 30, 2007), was a 6-3 decision by the Supreme Court rejecting application of the negative Commerce Clause to waste-removal ordinances in upstate New York that favored local businesses.

This case was remarkable in several respects:

• Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the majority opinion, used the term "judicial supremacy" for the first time in decades by the Supreme Court, in urging judicial restraint.

• Justice Clarence Thomas admitted that he erred in an opinion in 1994, something that judges rarely do.

• Justice Samuel Alito dissented from the view about the negative Commerce Clause taken by the other three conservative Justices, Scalia, Thomas and Roberts.

Chief Justice Roberts did not command a majority of the court for his balancing test:

The ordinances give the Counties a convenient and effective way to finance their integrated package of waste-disposal services. While "revenue generation is not a local interest that can justify discrimination against interstate commerce," Carbone, 511 U.S., at 393 (emphasis added), we think it is a cognizable benefit for purposes of the Pike test. At the same time, the ordinances are more than financing tools. They increase recycling in at least two ways, conferring significant health and environmental benefits upon the citizens of the Counties. First, they create enhanced incentives for recycling and proper disposal of other kinds of waste. Solid waste disposal is expensive in Oneida-Herkimer, but the Counties accept recyclables and many forms of hazardous waste for free, effectively encouraging their citizens to sort their own trash. Second, by requiring all waste to be deposited at Authority facilities, the Counties have markedly increased their ability to enforce recycling laws. If the haulers could take waste to any disposal site, achieving an equal level of enforcement would be much more costly, if not impossible. For these reasons, any arguable burden the ordinances impose on interstate commerce does not exceed their public benefits.

That received only 4 votes.

In dissent, Justice Alito said that the majority is overturning a limitation on the market participant exception. Justice Alito says, in dissent, that the municipalities "are doing exactly what the market-participant doctrine says they cannot: While acting as market participants by operating a fee-for-service business enterprise in an area in which there is an established interstate market, respondents are also regulating that market in a discriminatory manner and claiming that their special governmental status somehow insulates them from a dormant Commerce Clause challenge. See ibid. ... Today, however, the Court suggests, contrary to its prior holdings, that States can discriminate in favor of in-state interests while acting both as a market participant and as a market regulator."