City of Philadelphia v. New Jersey

Facts

A New Jersey law, ch. 363 of 1973 N. J. Laws, took effect in early 1974. It barred anyone from bringing into the State any solid or liquid waste that originated or was collected outside the State, except garbage to be fed to swine. The ban was to last until the state environmental commissioner decided that importing the waste could be permitted without endangering public health, safety and welfare, and issued regulations allowing and regulating its treatment and disposal. The commissioner issued regulations that let four narrow categories of waste in, such as separated recyclable material and waste to be processed at resource recovery facilities. Apart from those exceptions, New Jersey closed its borders to all waste from other States. The law hit private landfill operators in New Jersey and several cities in other States that had agreements with those operators to dispose of their waste. The legislature stated that waste volume was growing rapidly, that landfill sites in the State were being diminished, and that disposal of waste from outside the State threatened the environment. The New Jersey Supreme Court found that the State's existing landfills would be exhausted within a few years and that continuing to use them or opening new ones would take a heavy environmental toll. It also found that newer disposal methods were under development but would take time.

Issues

1. Is the interstate movement of waste that New Jersey bans 'commerce' under the Commerce Clause, so that the State's restriction of that movement is subject to constitutional scrutiny?
2. Does a New Jersey law that bars the importation of most waste from other States, while leaving its landfills open to waste generated in the State, violate the Commerce Clause?

Holding

New Jersey's ban on importing out-of-state waste discriminates against interstate commerce on its face and in its plain effect. It is not a quarantine law: New Jersey made no claim that the very movement of waste endangers health, and the harms are said to arise after disposal, when, as New Jersey concedes, there is no basis to distinguish out-of-state waste from the domestic waste the State still admits to its landfills. The ban violates the Commerce Clause.