In a ruling hailed as a victory for farm animals, the U.S. appellate court in San Francisco denied a meat industry request for an injunction against California’s voter-approved Proposition 12, which guarantees more space for hogs, calves, and chickens to move about. The meat industry contends that Prop 12 and similar state laws violate the so-called commerce clause of the Constitution, though they have failed repeatedly to persuade the courts.
On Thursday, a panel of three appellate judges ruled unanimously that a district court “did not abuse its discretion in holding that NAMI (North American Meat Institute) was unlikely to succeed on the merits of its dormant Commerce Clause claim” when it refused to issue an injunction to stop implementation of Prop 12. “We are disappointed in the ruling and are reviewing our options,” said the Meat Institute in a statement.
Besides requiring that standards be set for the treatment of food animals in California, Prop 12 says that pork, veal, and eggs produced in other states for sale in California must come from farms that meet California’s standards. Voters approved Prop 12 in a landslide in 2018.
“We’re pleased that the judicial system has again affirmed that each state has the right to ban the sale of products within its borders produced through cruel factory farming methods,” said attorney Rebecca Cary of the Humane Society of the United States, which intervened in the lawsuit to defend Prop 12. “Rather than continuing to squander their members’ money on losing frivolous lawsuits, the meat industry trade groups should instead invest in improving animal welfare and complying with animal cruelty laws.”
When it filed suit a year ago, the Meat Institute said Prop 12 meant “California will dictate farming practices across the nation,” driving up food costs for consumers and forcing farmers to remodel barns and other facilities. The lawsuit is akin to Farm Belt attempts to overturn the 2010 California law that extended the reach of Proposition 2, the 2008 predecessor to Prop 12. The Supreme Court refused in January 2019 to hear a challenge to the California law and a similar law in Massachusetts. It also refused to consider a 2017 challenge to the California law that said all eggs sold in the state had to be produced under the same standards that applied to its farmers.
Still pending before the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco is a lawsuit filed by the National Pork Producers Council and the American Farm Bureau Federation to have Prop 12 declared invalid.