Cite as: 512 U. S. 186 (1994)
Rehnquist, C. J., dissenting
wildlife refuges, for recreation, hunting, fishing, tourism, and education." App. 13.
Massachusetts has dealt with this problem by providing a subsidy to aid its beleaguered dairy farmers. In case after case, we have approved the validity under the Commerce Clause of such enactments. "No one disputes that a State may enact laws pursuant to its police powers that have the purpose and effect of encouraging domestic industry." Bacchus Imports, Ltd. v. Dias, 468 U. S. 263, 271 (1984). "Direct subsidization of domestic industry does not ordinarily run afoul of [the dormant Commerce Clause]; discriminatory taxation of out-of-state manufacturers does." New Energy Co. of Ind. v. Limbach, 486 U. S. 269, 278 (1988). But today the Court relegates these well-established principles to a footnote and, at the same time, gratuitously casts doubt on the validity of state subsidies, observing that "[w]e have never squarely confronted" their constitutionality. Ante, at 199, n. 15.
But in Milk Control Bd. v. Eisenberg Farm Products, 306 U. S. 346 (1939), the Court upheld a Pennsylvania statute establishing minimum prices to be paid to Pennsylvania dairy farmers against a Commerce Clause challenge by a Pennsylvania milk dealer that shipped all of its milk purchased in Pennsylvania to New York to be sold there. The Court observed that "[t]he purpose of the statute . . . is to reach a domestic situation in the interest of the welfare of the producers and consumers of milk in Pennsylvania." Id., at 352. It went on to say:
"One of the commonest forms of state action is the exercise of the police power directed to the control of local conditions and exerted in the interest of the welfare of the state's citizens. Every state police statute necessarily will affect interstate commerce in some degree, but such a statute does not run counter to the grant of Congressional power merely because it incidentally or
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