News

Tomorrow, the Supreme Court, will hear arguments in in the case National Pork Producers Council v. Ross. The pork producers are challenging California’s Proposition 12, the 2018 law that requires that certain meat products and eggs sold in the state meet minimum humane, health, and safety standards. At stake is the right of California and other jurisdictions to rid their local markets of products produced through cruel practices, such as keeping pregnant sows in crates so small that they cannot turn around.

Today, Harvard Law School Professor Laurence Tribe, one of the world’s leading constitutional scholars, weighed in on the case in an Op-Ed he wrote with Kelsey Eberly, former Legislative Policy Fellow with the Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program (ALPP) and its Executive Director Chris Green. Kelsey also authored a 60-page report for ALPP, which was released last month, entitled Potential Reverberations of Pork Producers’ Commerce Clause Challenge Before the Supreme Court.

In addition, our Animal Law & Policy Clinic filed an amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief with the Supreme Court in the case on behalf of a coalition of animal protection organizations and law professors, including San Francisco Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SF SPCA), The San Diego Humane Society, Marin Humane, Mercy for Animals (“MFA”), Rise for Animals, the Justice for Animals Program at the University of San Francisco’s School of Law, Professor Taimie Bryant at UCLA, Professor Douglas A. Kysar at Yale Law School, and Professor Rajesh Reddy at Lewis & Clark Law School.

As Chris says in this Vox article published yesterday: “Anyone who says they know what’s going to happen is lying to you or themselves.”