Maine v. Taylor – Wikipedia

1986 United States Supreme Court case

Maine v. Taylor
Full case name	Maine v. Taylor et al.
Citations	477 U.S. 131 (more)
Prior	United States v. Taylor, 585 F. Supp. 393 (D. Me. 1984); reversed, 752 F.2d 757 (1st Cir. 1985).
States may prohibit the importation of out-of-state goods moving within the flow of commerce only if the prohibition serves a legitimate local concern and there are no other means of protecting that interest.
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger Associate Justices William J. Brennan Jr. · Byron White Thurgood Marshall · Harry Blackmun Lewis F. Powell Jr. · William Rehnquist John P. Stevens · Sandra Day O’Connor
Majority	Blackmun, joined by Burger, Brennan, White, Marshall, Powell, Rehnquist, O’Connor
Dissent	Stevens
U.S. Const. art. I, § 8

Maine v. Taylor, 477 U.S. 131 (1986), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that there was an exception to the “virtually per se rule of invalidity” of the dormant commerce clause.^[1] The Supreme Court of the United States found that a Maine law prohibiting the importation of out-of-state bait fish was constitutional because Maine authorities couldn’t be certain that imported fish would be free of “parasites and nonnative species” that might pose environmental harm to local ecology. Discriminatory laws may be upheld only if they serve “legitimate local purposes that could not adequately be served by available nondiscriminatory alternatives,” wrote Justice Blackmun, author of the majority opinion. In City of Philadelphia v. New Jersey, the Court had previously ruled that New Jersey’s ban of out-of-state solid waste was facially discriminatory to the state’s residents in a national market and was therefore overturned.^[2]

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