California’s Chickens Go to Court

The Justice Department sues to block the Golden State’s cage-free hen mandate.

Are California’s cage-free chickens coming home to roost? The Justice Department this month filed a lawsuit challenging the state’s cage-free egg mandate, which increases omelette prices in the state and scrambles interstate commerce.

Chickens on a farm in California

California’s progressives complain about the state’s high cost of living even as they enact policies that are the cause. A classic example is the state’s farm animal-welfare regulations, which animal-rights groups deceptively sold to voters as protecting consumer health and safety even though they don’t.

First came a 2008 voter initiative (Prop. 2) followed by a 2010 law that taken together barred the sale of eggs from hens kept in housing that prevented them from “fully extending his or her limbs” or “turning around freely” for the majority of the day. In 2018 voters enacted Prop. 12, which imposed onerous minimum-floor spacing prescriptions for egg-laying hens.

Farmers have either had to retrofit their facilities to comply with chickens’ right to cage-free living or forgo selling eggs in California. Many have done the latter. Constricted supply and higher production costs for cage-free hens have increased egg prices in the state.

A Purdue University study found that Prop. 12 increased egg prices from $0.25 to $0.73 a dozen compared to other states. An earlier study found that Prop. 2 tacked on 48 cents to $1.48. When avian flu peaked, eggs were selling for more than $12 a dozen at some supermarkets because flocks from their cage-free suppliers were wiped out and non-cage-free eggs couldn’t be sold in the state.

This sort of balkanized food system is what Congress sought to prevent when it passed the 1970 Egg Products Inspection Act, which bars states from requiring “the use of standards of quality, condition, weight, quantity, or grade which are in addition to or different from the official Federal standards.” DOJ argues that California’s rules are expressly pre-empted by federal law.

The federal egg law is similar to the Federal Meat Inspection Act, which the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 pre-empted a California law regulating how slaughterhouses treated “nonambulatory” pigs. Democrats squawk that the lawsuit undermines state sovereignty, but the Justice Department has a responsibility to prevent state intrusions on federal law.

If the lawsuit succeeds, Californians can thank President Trump for saving them from another case of progressive regulatory folly.