A California law setting welfare standards for farm animals will stand after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up an appeal of a lawsuit against it.
Proposition 12, passed by voters in 2018, mandates humane confinement conditions for chickens, sows and other animals used in agriculture. These will apply to animals used in production of all food sold in the state, even from farms outside California.
That provision led to a lawsuit by the National Pork Producers Council and the American Farm Bureau Federation, which was joined by the attorneys general of 21 states. The plaintiffs argued that for California to impose conditions on food produced out of state constituted a restriction on interstate commerce.
The suit lost in lower courts, including the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The U.S. Supreme Court declined on June 28 to take up the issue.
