Interstate transportation brought forth hundreds of cases. State regulation of trains operating across state lines resulted in divergent rulings. It was early held improper for states to prescribe charges for transportation of persons and freight on the basis that the regulation must be uniform and thus could not be left to the states. The Court deemed “reasonable” and therefore constitutional many state regulations requiring a fair and adequate service for its inhabitants by railway companies conducting interstate service within its borders, as long as there was no unnecessary burden on commerce. A marked tolerance for a class of regulations that arguably furthered public safety was long exhibited by the Court,1039 even in instances in which the safety connection was tenuous. (E.g., Terminal ***’n v. Trainmen, 318 U.S. 1 (1943) (requiring railroad to provide caboose cars for its employees); Hennington v. Georgia, 163 U.S. 299 (1896) (forbidding freight trains to run on Sundays). But see Seaboard Air Line Ry. v. Blackwell, 244 U.S. 310 (1917) (voiding as too onerous on interstate transportation a law requiring trains to come to almost a complete stop at all grade crossings, when there were 124 highway crossings at grade in 123 miles, doubling the running time). Of particular controversy were “full-crew” laws, represented as safety measures, that were attacked by the companies as “feather-bedding” rules. Four cases over a lengthy period sustained the laws. Chicago, R.I. & Pac. Ry. Co. v. Arkansas, 219 U.S. 453 (1911); St. Louis, I. Mt. & So. Ry. v. Arkansas, 240 U.S. 518 (1916); Missouri Pacific R.R. v. Norwood, 283 U.S. 249 (1931); Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen & Enginemen v. Chicago, R.I. & P. R.R., 382 U.S. 423 (1966).
Similarly, motor vehicle regulations have met mixed fates. Basically, it has always been recognized that states, in the interest of public safety and conservation of public highways, may enact and enforce comprehensive licensing and regulation of motor vehicles using its facilities. But compare Michigan Comm’n v. Duke, 266 U.S. 570 (1925) (state may not impose common-carrier, i.e., higher duty of care, responsibilities on business operating between states that did not assume them); Buck v. Kuykendall, 267 U.S. 307 (1925) (denial of certificate of convenience under circumstances was a ban on competition).
However, the states always had an obligation to act non-discriminatorily. Just as in the taxing area, regulation that was parochially oriented, to protect local producers or industries, for instance, was not evaluated under ordinary standards but subjected to practically per se invalidation. The mirror image of Welton v. Missouri, 91 U.S. 275 (1875), the tax case, was Minnesota v. Barber,136 U.S. 313 (1890) in which the Court invalidated a facially neutral law that in its practical effect discriminated against interstate commerce and in favor of local commerce.
The law required fresh meat sold in the state to have been inspected by its own inspectors with 24 hours of slaughter. Thus, meat slaughtered in other states was excluded from the Minnesota market. The principle of the case has a long pedigree of application. See, for example, Brimmer v. Rebman, 138 U.S. 78 (1891) (law requiring postslaughter inspection in each county of meat transported over 100 miles from the place of slaughter unconstitutional restriction on interstate commerce); Dean Milk Co. v. City of Madison, 340 U.S. 349 (1951) (city ordinance preventing selling of milk as pasteurized unless it had been processed and bottled at an approved plant within a radius of five miles from the central square of Madison unconstitutional restriction on interstate commerce favoring local daries). As the latter case demonstrates, it is constitutionally irrelevant that other Wisconsin producers were also disadvantaged by the law.
For a modern application of the principle of these cases, see Fort Gratiot Sanitary Landfill v. Michigan Nat. Res. Dep’t, 504 U.S. 353 (1992) (law forbidding landfills from accepting out-of-county wastes unconstitutional restriction of interstate commerce). See also C & A Carbone, Inc. v. Town of Clarkstown, 511 U.S. 383, 391 (1994) (discrimination against interstate commerce not preserved because local businesses also suffer).
Interstate protectionist regulation on behalf of local milk producers has occasioned judicial censure. Thus, in Baldwin v. G.A.F. Seelig, 294 U.S. 511 (1935), (see also Polar Ice Cream & Creamery Co. v. Andrews, 375 U.S. 361 (1964)), the Court had before it a complex state price-fixing scheme for milk, in which the state, in order to keep the price of milk artificially high within the state, required milk dealers buying out-of-state to pay producers, wherever they were, what the dealers had to pay within the state, and, thus, in-state producers were protected. And, in H. P. Hood & Sons, Inc. v. Du Mond, 336 U.S. 525 (1949), the Court struck down a state refusal to grant an out-of-state milk distributor a license to operate a milk receiving station within the state on the basis that the additional diversion of local milk to the other state would impair the supply for the in-state market. For the most recent case in this saga, see West Lynn Creamery, Inc. v. Healy, 512 U.S. 186 A state may not bar an interstate market to protect local interests. And the Court does not permit a state to combat discrimination against its own products by admitting only products (here, again, milk) from states that have reciprocity agreements with it to protect its own dealers. Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. v. Cottrell, 424 U.S. 366 (1976).
