The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a challenge to a California animal cruelty law that affects the pork industry, ruling that the case was properly dismissed by lower courts. Pork producers had said that the law could force industry-wide changes and raise the cost of bacon and other pork products nationwide.

California’s law requires more space for breeding pigs, and producers say it would force the $26 billion-a-year industry to change its practices even though pork is produced almost entirely outside California.

The justices upheld lower court rulings dismissing the pork producers’ case.

[Link to the decision is here. It was an interesting split, with Gorsuch writing the controlling opinion and joined by Thomas, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Barrett. Who would have picked that line-up on, well, anything? There are a lot of addenda involving partial concurrences and partial dissents. Nor was that the only instance of strange bedfellows; the Biden administration joined the pork producers in asking to overturn California’s Prop 12.

This is perhaps a step in the direction of judicial modesty. In this decision, the court allows a state to set its own practices without interference via the interstate commerce clause, which might — might — be a step back from Wickard and other decisions. Essentially, the court’s telling pork producers not to sell in California if they don’t want to comply with Prop 12’s requirements, and that’s at least defensible from a conservative standpoint. — Ed]