Cite as: 512 U. S. 186 (1994)
Opinion of the Court
farmers, instead of exerting their influence against the tax, were in fact its primary supporters.18
Respondent's argument would require us to analyze separately two parts of an integrated regulation, but we cannot divorce the premium payments from the use to which the payments are put. It is the entire program—not just the contributions to the fund or the distributions from that fund—that simultaneously burdens interstate commerce and discriminates in favor of local producers. The choice of constitutional means—nondiscriminatory tax and local subsidy—cannot guarantee the constitutionality of the program as a whole. New York's minimum price order also used constitutional means—a State's power to regulate prices—but was held unconstitutional because of its deleterious effects. Baldwin v. G. A. F. Seelig, Inc., 294 U. S. 511 (1935). Similarly, the law held unconstitutional in Bacchus Imports, Ltd. v. Dias, 468 U. S. 263 (1984), involved the exercise of Hawaii's undisputed power to tax and to grant tax exemptions.
Our Commerce Clause jurisprudence is not so rigid as to be controlled by the form by which a State erects barriers to commerce. Rather our cases have eschewed formalism for a sensitive, case-by-case analysis of purposes and effects. As the Court declared over 50 years ago: "The commerce clause forbids discrimination, whether forthright or ingenious. In each case it is our duty to determine whether the statute under attack, whatever its name may be, will in its practical operation work discrimination against interstate commerce." Best & Co. v. Maxwell, 311 U. S. 454, 455- 456 (1940); Maryland v. Louisiana, 451 U. S. 725, 756 (1981);
18 As the Governor's Special Commission Relative to the Establishment of a Dairy Stabilization Fund realized, consumers would be unlikely to organize effectively to oppose the pricing order. The commission's report remarked, "the estimated two cent increase per quart of milk would not be noticed by the consuming public," App. 18, because the price of milk varies so often and for so many reasons that consumers would be unlikely to feel the price increases or to attribute them to the pricing order.
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