What the 'Pig Case' Says about the Supreme Court

[Geee]

American Thinker

On 11 May, the U.S. Supreme Court decided National Pork Producers' Council v. Ross, in which the justices ruled by a 5-4 margin that California's Proposition 12, approved by voters in 2018, is constitutional.  Proposition 12 banned the sale, in California, of pork derived from pigs, or the offspring of pigs, that were confined on less than 24 square feet of floor space per breeding pig, or "in a manner that prevents the animal from lying down, standing up, fully extending [its] limbs, or turning around freely."

The case was an important decision for states' rights, and it split the Court in an unusual way: Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Barrett sided with California, while Justices Roberts, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Jackson voted against allowing the new law to go into force.

It is worth noting that of the five justices who made America's liberals so angry by deciding Dobbs v. Jackson last summer, three of them — Thomas, Gorsuch, and Barrett — sided with deep-blue California in this particular dispute, while the four left-leaning justices were split half and half.  (Bizarrely, the Biden administration deferred to commercial interests by asking the Court not to rule in favor of California — thus angering many Democrats who support animal rights.)