California’s Proposition 12, which regulates space requirements for farm animals, should be struck down, said Stephen Vaden, deputy secretary of agriculture.
Prop 12, as it’s known, was passed by California voters in 2018. The regulation has two components. First, it bars confinement of specific types of farm animals in “a cruel manner” within the state of California. Second, it prohibits sale of products within the state that were made from animals confined in a manner outlined by the law.
Considering California’s large population and its market share, “the effect of the law is considerable,” said Beth Rumley, senior staff attorney for the National Agricultural Law Center. “It applies the standards set by California voters to animals in every state that are produced for sale in California.”
Court challenges
The law was challenged in 2019 in National Pork Producers Council v. Ross, where plaintiffs argued that the law violated the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution. The Supreme Court disagreed, allowing it to be enforced.
However, “California’s law was unconstitutional and should be struck down,” Vaden said, speaking to an audience of nearly 1,000 attendees at a webinar hosted by the National Agricultural Law Center on Jan. 21.
“How amazing is it that from the left and right, from the Trump administration to the Biden administration, people of many different policy views, different legal, different legal regimes in terms of whether they’re originalists or living constitution-type people, took a look at this statute and said, ‘this cannot stand.’”
Vaden said, “The Commerce Clause gave power to Congress, not to the executive branch, not to the several legislatures of the many states, but solely to the federal Congress to regulate interstate commerce.”
He argues that Prop 12 puts up “domestic trade barriers in our own country” at a time when “our country is working diligently to knock down foreign trade barriers to American farmers selling their goods overseas.”
Before being appointed to his USDA position, Vaden served as a judge on the U.S. Court of International Trade and as general counsel of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The plaintiffs in National Pork Producers Council v. Ross claimed Prop 12 violated the Dormant Commerce Clause because Prop 12 requires any hog producer — including those located outside of California — who sells pork in California to provide a minimum amount of square feet to each hog.
To succeed in court, the plaintiffs needed to show that Prop 12 discriminated against interstate commerce, regulated extraterritorially or imposed a substantial burden on interstate commerce that was clearly excessive in relation to California’s local benefits, according to the National Agricultural Law Center.
The case wound its way through the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California and the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals before eventually landing at the U.S. Supreme Court.
“I feel very strongly that the Supreme Court got that case dead wrong,” Vaden said. “Whether you were talking about the case from a civil procedure standpoint or whether you’re talking about the merits of the Dormant Commerce Clause issue, it would be difficult to get that case more wrong than the Supreme Court of the United States did.”
He said the high court “failed in its most elemental duty, which is to properly understand the differentiation between the role of the trial court, the role of the appellate court, and when and how facts come into play.”
Find the Vaden webinar recording online.
“There are a lot of perspectives about Prop 12, and it’s an issue we receive a lot of inquiries about from various stakeholders,” said National Agricultural Law Center Director Harrison Pittman. “We appreciate Judge Vaden taking time to share his views on Prop 12 along with a number of other issues.”
Find both upcoming and archived National Agricultural Law Center webinars online.
PHOTO: Stephen Vaden, deputy secretary of agriculture, addressed several topics during a Jan. 21, 2026, webinar. (NALC image)
