Chemical Waste Management, Inc. v. Hunt, 504 U.S. 334, 14 (1992)

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Cite as: 504 U. S. 334 (1992)

Opinion of the Court

waste within its borders and the importation of still more hazardous waste subject to payment of the additional fee. In any event, while it is true that certain quarantine laws have not been considered forbidden protectionist measures, even though directed against out-of-state commerce, those laws "did not discriminate against interstate commerce as such, but simply prevented traffic in noxious articles, whatever their origin." Philadelphia v. New Jersey, supra, at 629.11 As the Court stated in Guy v. Baltimore, 100 U. S., at 443:

"In the exercise of its police powers, a State may exclude from its territory, or prohibit the sale therein of any articles which, in its judgment, fairly exercised, are prejudicial to the health or which would endanger the lives or property of its people. But if the State, under the guise of exerting its police powers, should make such exclusion or prohibition applicable solely to articles, of that kind, that may be produced or manufactured in other States, the courts would find no difficulty in holding such legislation to be in conflict with the Constitution of the United States."

See also Reid v. Colorado, 187 U. S. 137, 151 (1902); Railroad Co. v. Husen, 95 U. S. 465, 472 (1878).

11 "The hostility is to the thing itself, not to merely interstate shipments of the thing; and an undiscriminating hostility is at least nondiscrimina-tory. But that is not the case here. The State of Illinois is quite willing to allow the storage and even the shipment for storage of spent nuclear fuel in Illinois, provided only that its origin is intrastate." Illinois v. General Elec. Co., 683 F. 2d 206, 214 (CA7 1982), cert. denied, 461 U. S. 913 (1983); cf. Oregon-Washington Co. v. Washington, supra, at 96: Inspection followed by quarantine of hay from fields infested with weevils is "a real quarantine law, and not a mere inhibition against importation of alfalfa from a large part of the country without regard to the condition which might make its importation dangerous."

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