Cite as: 519 U. S. 278 (1997)
Stevens, J., dissenting
judgment) (collecting cases). Although petitioner contends that Ohio facially discriminates against interstate commerce with respect to natural gas sales, its argument is based on a novel premise: that private marketers engaged in the sale of natural gas are similarly situated to public utility companies. Nothing in this Court's negative Commerce Clause jurisprudence compels that conclusion. To hold that States must tax gas sales by these two types of entities equally would broaden the negative Commerce Clause beyond its existing scope, and intrude on a regulatory sphere traditionally occupied by Congress and the States.
Justice Stevens, dissenting.
In Ohio, as in other States, regulated utilities selling natural gas—referred to by the Court as "LDC's"—operate in two markets, one that is monopolistic and one that is competitive.
In the first, they sell a "noncompetitive bundled gas product," ante, at 310, to small consumers who have no practical alternative source of supply. The LDCs' dominant position in that market justifies detailed regulation of their activities in order to protect consumers from the risk of exploitation by a seller with monopoly power. See ante, at 294-297. The basic purpose of that regulation is to protect consumers, not to subsidize the LDC's.
The second market in which LDC's sell natural gas is a competitive market in which large customers like the General Motors Corporation (GMC) have alternative sources of supply. Although Ohio possesses undoubted power to regulate the activities of all sellers in that market, Panhandle Eastern Pipe Line Co. v. Michigan Pub. Serv. Comm'n, 341 U. S. 329 (1951), it has not done so in any manner relevant here. The purchasers in this competitive market do not need the protections afforded by the state regulation of the monopolistic market, see ante, at 302-303, and the benefits provided by these regulations will thus not affect a competi-
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