Reference no: EM131272841

United Haulers Association, Inc. v. Oneida-Herkimer Solid Waste Management Authority
Supreme Court of the United States 127 S. Ct. 1786 (2007)
In 1989, the Oneida-Herkimer Solid Waste Management Authority (Authority) and Oneida and Herkimer Counties entered into a solid waste management agreement, under which the Authority agreed to manage all solid waste within the counties. The Authority collected "tipping fees" to cover its operating and maintenance costs, but these fees were significantly higher than typical open-market fees. In addition to landfill transportation and solid waste disposal, the fees enabled the Authority to provide recycling of 33 kinds of materials, as well as composting, household hazardous waste disposal, and a number of other services.

The counties enacted "flow control"ordinances requiring that all solid waste generated within the counties be delivered to the Authority's processing sites. Under the ordinance, private haulers had to obtain a permit from the Authority to collect waste in the counties. United Haulers, a trade association made up of solid waste management companies and haulers operating in Oneida and Herkimer Counties, brought suit alleging that the flow control laws violate the Commerce Clause by discriminating against interstate commerce. The district court ruled in favor of the haulers, but the Second Circuit reversed and remanded. After further proceedings, the Second Circuit's previous ruling in favor of the counties stood. The Second Circuit's ruling was in opposition to an opinion given by the Sixth Circuit in National Solid Wastes Management Association v. Daviess County, 434 F.3d 898 (6th Cir. 2006), so the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.

Chief Justice Roberts
"Flow control" ordinances require trash haulers to deliver solid waste to a particular waste processing facility. In C & A Carbone, Inc. v. Clarkstown, 511 U.S. 383 (1994), this Court struck down under the Commerce Clause a flow control ordinance that forced haulers to deliver waste to a particular private processing facility.

In this case, we face flow control ordinances quite similar to the one invalidated in Carbone. The only salient difference is that the laws at issue here require haulers to bring waste to facilities owned and operated by a state-created public benefit corporation. We find this difference constitutionally significant. Disposing of trash has been a traditional government activity for years, and laws that favor the government in such areas-but treat every private business, whether in-state or out-of-state, exactly the same-do not discriminate against interstate commerce for purposes of the Commerce Clause. Applying the Commerce Clause test reserved for regulations that do not discriminate against interstate commerce, we uphold these ordinances because any incidental burden they may have on interstate commerce does not outweigh the benefits they confer on the citizens of Oneida and Herkimer Counties.

II A
The Commerce Clause provides that "Congress shall have Power . . . to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States." Although the Constitution does not in [its] terms limit the power of States to regulate commerce, we have long interpreted the Commerce Clause as an implicit restraint on state authority, even in the absence of a conflicting federal statute.

To determine whether a law violates this so-called "dormant"aspect of the Commerce Clause, we first ask whether it discriminates on its face against interstate commerce. In this context, "‘discrimination' simply means differential treatment of in-state and out-of-state economic interests that benefits the former and burdens the latter." Discriminatory laws motivated by "simple economic protectionism" are subject to a "virtually per se rule of invalidity," which can only be overcome by a showing that the State has no other means to advance a legitimate local purpose.

B
[T]he haulers argue vigorously that the Counties' ordinances discriminate against interstate commerce under Carbone. In Carbone, the town of Clarkstown, New York, hired a private contractor to build a waste transfer station. According to the terms of the deal, the contractor would operate the facility for five years, charging an above-market tipping fee of $81 per ton; after five years, the town would buy the facility for one dollar. The town guaranteed that the facility would receive a certain volume of trash per year.

To make good on its promise, Clarkstown passed a flow control ordinance requiring that all nonhazardous solid waste within the town be deposited at the transfer facility.

This Court struck down the ordinance, holding that it discriminated against interstate commerce by "hoarding solid waste, and the demand to get rid of it, for the benefit of the preferred processing facility." The dissent pointed out that all of this Court's local processing cases involved laws that discriminated in favor of private entities, not public ones. According to the dissent, Clarkstown's ostensibly private transfer station was "essentially a municipal facility," and this distinction should have saved Clarkstown's ordinance because favoring local government is by its nature different from favoring a particular private company. The majority did not comment on the dissent's public-private distinction.

As the Second Circuit explained, "in Carbone the Justices were divided over the fact of whether the favored facility was public or private, rather than on the import of that distinction."Carbone cannot be regarded as having decided the public-private question.

C
Unlike private enterprise, government is vested with the responsibility of protecting the health, safety, and welfare of its citizens. These important responsibilities set state and local government apart from a typical private business.

Given these differences, it does not make sense to regard laws favoring local government and laws favoring private industry with equal skepticism. As our local processing cases demonstrate, when a law favors in-state business over out-of-state competition, rigorous scrutiny is appropriate because the law is often the product of "simple economic protectionism." Laws favoring local government, by contrast, may be directed toward any number of legitimate goals unrelated to protectionism. Here the flow control ordinances enable the Counties to pursue particular policies with respect to the handling and treatment of waste generated in the Counties, while allocating the costs of those policies on citizens and businesses according to the volume of waste they generate.

We hold that the Counties' flow control ordinances, which treat in-state private business interests exactly the same as out-of-state ones, do not "discriminate against interstate commerce" for purposes of the dormant Commerce Clause.

D
The counties' flow control ordinances are properly analyzed under the test set forth in Pike v. Bruce Church, Inc., 397 U.S. 137 (1970), which is reserved for laws "directed to legitimate local concerns, with effects upon interstate commerce that are only incidental."Under the Pike test, we will uphold a nondiscriminatory statute like this one "unless the burden imposed on [interstate] commerce is clearly excessive in relation to the putative local benefits."

[The ordinances] 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

CRITICAL THINKING ABOUT THE LAW
1. Chief Justice Roberts's opinion relies on drawing several legal analogies to compare and contrast United Haulers with other cases. What are the legal analogies Roberts makes? Are the legal analogies appropriate?

Clue: Are the facts of the various cases Roberts discusses similar to those in United Haulers? Are there relevant differences in the fact patterns?

2. What ethical norm is responsible for Chief Justice Roberts's reasoning?

Clue: What ethical norms might someone who disagrees with Roberts hold?