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Opinion of the Court
(quoting Armco Inc. v. Hardesty, 467 U. S. 638, 642 (1984)). See also American Trucking Assns., Inc. v. Scheiner, 483 U. S. 266, 286 (1987).4
Respondents argue, and the Oregon Supreme Court held,
that the statutory nexus between the surcharge and "the [otherwise uncompensated] costs to the State of Oregon and its political subdivisions of disposing of solid waste generated out-of-state," Ore. Rev. Stat. § 459.298 (1991), necessarily precludes a finding that the surcharge is discriminatory. We find respondents' narrow focus on Oregon's compensatory aim to be foreclosed by our precedents. As we reiterated in Chemical Waste, the purpose of, or justification for, a law has no bearing on whether it is facially discriminatory. See 504 U. S., at 340-341. See also Philadelphia, supra, at 626. Consequently, even if the surcharge merely recoups the costs of disposing of out-of-state waste in Oregon, the fact remains that the differential charge favors shippers of Oregon waste over their counterparts handling waste generated in other States. In making that geographic distinction, the surcharge patently discriminates against interstate commerce.
III
Because the Oregon surcharge is discriminatory, the virtually per se rule of invalidity provides the proper legal standard here, not the Pike balancing test. As a result, the surcharge must be invalidated unless respondents can "sho[w]
4 The dissent argues that the $2.25 per ton surcharge is so minimal in amount that it cannot be considered discriminatory, even though the surcharge expressly applies only to waste generated in other States. Post, at 115. The dissent does not attempt to reconcile that novel understanding of discrimination with our precedents, which clearly establish that the degree of a differential burden or charge on interstate commerce "measures only the extent of the discrimination" and "is of no relevance to the determination whether a State has discriminated against interstate commerce." Wyoming v. Oklahoma, 502 U. S. 437, 455 (1992). See also, e. g., Maryland v. Louisiana, 451 U. S. 725, 760 (1981) ("We need not know how unequal [a] [t]ax is before concluding that it . . . discriminates").
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