State of Misourri ex rel, et al. v. Kamala Harris, 1/17/17, 9C
In 2008, California voters adopted Proposition 2, which enacted new standards beginning on January 1, 2015, for housing farm animals. Under Prop 2, egg-laying hens must be given room to do things like sit down and stand up. The California Legislature subsequently enacted legislation that makes it illegal to sell eggs from hens that don’t meet treatment standards set out in Prop 2, with the same effective date as Prop 2. In 2014, about a year before these laws took effect, six states sued California’s AG to declare that these laws violate the Commerce Clause. The trial court granted Defendant’s motion to dismiss based on lack of subject matter jurisdiction. Held: Affirmed
States who sue on behalf of their citizens must have something called parens patriae standing. To meet parens patriae standing, a state must meet not only the requirements of Article III standing, but two additional requirements unique to that doctrine. The first requirement is that “the State must articulate an interest apart from the interests of particular private parties, i.e., the State must be more than a nominal party.”
The egg farmers in each plaintiff state produce hundreds of millions of eggs worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Under California’s law, egg farmers either have to forgo the California market or modify their facilities, apparently at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Parens patriae can be satisfied where the policy/actions of one state affects a large segment of the population of another state. Here, the law obviously affects egg farmers; but that’s not enough. Egg farmers can pursue their own relief by filing their own complaints, and that counts against finding parens patriae standing. Second, plaintiffs claimed that their populations would be affected because of anticipated price fluctuations in the egg market. 9C said that was speculative. Finally, 9C rejected plaintiffs’ argument that the legislation was discriminatory against out-of-state egg farmers. The law applies equally to egg farmers doing business in plaintiff States and in California. Because plaintiffs did not meet the first requirement for parens patriae standing, the court did not analyze the second requirement.
Leave to amend was also denied. Plaintiffs argued that events after the legislation took on January 1, 2015 support standing. But subject matter jurisdiction is determined as of the date the action is filed, not on subsequent events.
Final thought: It is worth a trip to youtube to search “inhumane treatment of chickens or farm animals.”
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