426 U.S. 794 (1976)

HUGHES, SECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION OF MARYLAND, ET AL.
v.
ALEXANDRIA SCRAP CORP.

No. 74-1607.

Supreme Court of United States.

Argued January 21, 1976. Decided June 24, 1976. APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MARYLAND.

*795 Henry R. Lord, Deputy Attorney General of Maryland, argued the cause for appellants. With him on the briefs were Francis B. Burch, Attorney General, and J. Michael McWilliams and Glenn E. Bushel, Assistant Attorneys General.

Norman P. Ramsey argued the cause for appellee. *796 With him on the brief were H. Thomas Howell and Alan N. Gamse.

MR. JUSTICE POWELL delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case involves a two-pronged constitutional attack on a recent amendment to one part of a complex Maryland plan for ridding that State of abandoned automobiles. The three-judge District Court agreed with appellee, a Virginia scrap processor that participates in the plan, that the amendment violated the Commerce Clause and denied appellee equal protection of the laws. We disagree on both points.

I

The 1967 session of the Maryland Legislature commissioned a study to suggest some way to deal with the growing aesthetic problem of abandoned automobiles. The study concluded that the root of the problem was the existence of bottlenecks in the "scrap cycle," the course that a vehicle follows from abandonment to processing into scrap metal for ultimate re-use by steel mills. At its 1969 session, the legislature responded by enacting a comprehensive statute designed to speed up the scrap cycle by using state money both as a carrot and as a stick.^[1] The statute is intricate, but its provisions relevant to this case may be sketched briefly.

The legislative study had found that one of the bottlenecks occurred in the junkyards of wrecking companies, which tended to accumulate vehicles for the resale value of their spare parts. The statute's stick designed to clear this bottleneck is a requirement that a Maryland wrecker *797 desiring to keep abandoned vehicles on its premises must obtain a license and pay a recurring fine for any vehicle of a specified age retained for more than a year.^[2] The study had identified as another cause of sluggishness in the scrap cycle the low profits earned by wreckers and others for delivering vehicles to scrap processors. The carrot written into the statute to remedy this problem is a "bounty" paid by the State for the destruction, by a processor licensed under the statute, of any vehicle formerly titled in Maryland.^[3] When a wrecker licensed under the statute to stockpile vehicles delivers one of them for scrapping it shares the bounty equally with the processor. The processor receives the entire bounty when it destroys a vehicle supplied by someone other than a licensed wrecker.^[4]

These penalty and bounty provisions work with elementary laws of economics to speed up the scrap cycle. The penalty for retention of vehicles, plus the prospect of sharing the bounty, work in tandem to encourage licensed wreckers to move vehicles to processors. The bounties to processors on vehicles from unlicensed suppliers also encourage those suppliers to deliver to the processors, because the processors are able to pay higher than normal market prices by sharing the bounties with them.^[5]

*798 The penalty and bounty provisions, however, did not remove another impediment to the smooth functioning of the scrap cycle that was legal rather than economic in origin. This was the possibility of suits for conversion against a processor by owners who might claim that they had not abandoned their vehicles. To meet this problem the statute specified several documents with which a processor could prove clear title to a vehicle, and required that a processor obtain one of these documents from its supplier and submit it to the State as a condition of receiving the bounty. One of the documents, called a "Wrecker's Certificate," can be given only by a wrecker licensed under the statute.^[6] It is essentially a clear title that the wrecker secures by following statutory notice procedures at the time it first obtains a vehicle. Suppliers other than licensed wreckers must provide some other document—either a properly endorsed certificate of title, a certificate from a police department vesting title in the supplier after statutory notices, or a bill of sale from a police auction.^[7]

These documentation requirements, although vital for the protection of processors, are themselves some slight encumbrance upon the free transfer of abandoned vehicles to processors. Apparently in recognition of this fact, and the reduced potential for owners' claims in the case of ancient automobiles, the statute placed vehicles over eight years old and inoperable ("hulks") into a special category. Section 11-1002.2 (f) (5) of the statute, *799 as originally enacted, provided in substance that anyone in possession of a hulk could transfer it to a scrap processor, and the processor could claim a bounty for its destruction, without delivery to the processor or subsequent submission to the State of any documentation of title.^[8]

A

The statute extends its burdens of fines, and its benefits in the form of a share in bounties, only to wreckers that maintain junkyards located in Maryland, and requires a license only of those wreckers. There is no similar residency requirement for scrap processors that wish to obtain a license and participate in the bounty program,^[9] and in fact seven of the 16 scrap processors that have participated are located in either Pennsylvania or Virginia. Appellee, a Virginia corporation with a processing plant near the Potomac River in Alexandria, was an original licensee under the Maryland statute. Presumably because of its proximity to the southern Maryland *800 and Washington, D. C., areas, appellee attracted enough Maryland-titled vehicles to its plant to rank third among licensed processors in receipt of bounties through the summer of 1974.

As is apparently the case with most of the licensed processors, virtually all (96%) of the bounty-eligible vehicles processed by appellee during that period were hulks, upon which appellee did not have to demand title documentation from its suppliers in order later to receive the bounty. In the summer of 1974, however, Maryland changed significantly the treatment of hulks by amending § 11-1002.2 (f) (5).^[10] Under the law as amended it is no longer possible for a licensed scrap processor to receive a bounty on a hulk without submitting title documentation to the State. But the documentation required of a processor whose plant is in Maryland differs from that required of a processor, like appellee, whose plant *801 is not in Maryland. The former need only submit a simple document in which the person who delivered the hulk certified his own right to it and agreed to indemnify the processor for any third-party claims arising from its destruction. Hulk processors long had required such "indemnity agreements" from their hulk suppliers as a matter of industry practice. The effect of the 1974 amendment is to give these agreements legal recognition and to require one when a Maryland processor applies for a bounty on a hulk. The non-Maryland processor, however, cannot submit a simple indemnity agreement. For it, receipt of a bounty on a hulk now depends upon the same documentation specified for abandoned vehicles in general: a certificate of title, a police certificate vesting title, a bill of sale from a police auction, or—in the case of licensed wreckers only—a Wrecker's Certificate.

B

The complaint in this case was filed shortly after the effective date of the amendment to § 11-1002.2 (f) (5). Papers submitted to the three-judge District Court on summary judgment indicated that enactment of the amendment had been followed by a precipitate decline in the number of bounty-eligible hulks supplied to appellee's plant from Maryland sources.^[11] Appellee attributed the decline primarily to the effect of the amendment upon the decision of unlicensed suppliers as to where to *802 dispose of their hulks.^[12] It is easier for an unlicensed supplier to sign an indemnity agreement upon delivering a hulk to a processor than it is for it to secure some form of title documentation. Because only a Maryland processor can use an indemnity agreement to obtain a bounty, the amendment gave Maryland processors an advantage over appellee and other non-Maryland processors in the competition for bounty-eligible hulks from unlicensed suppliers. Such hulks therefore now tend to remain in State instead of moving to licensed processors outside Maryland.

Appellee contended below that the 1974 amendment to § 11-1002.2 (f) (5) violated the Commerce Clause by interfering with, or "burdening," the flow of bounty-eligible hulks across state lines, and denied appellee equal protection of the laws by discriminating arbitrarily between it and licensed processors located in Maryland as to the right to claim bounties on hulks by submitting indemnity agreements. The District Court granted summary judgment to appellee on both claims, and enjoined the State of Maryland from giving further effect to that part of the 1974 amendment which restricts the right to obtain bounties based on indemnity agreements to Maryland processors only. 391 F. Supp. 46. The State appealed, and we noted probable jurisdiction. 423 U. S. 819.

II

In this Court appellee relies on the Commerce Clause *803 argument that was adopted by the District Court. The argument starts from the premise, well established by the history of the Commerce Clause, that this Nation is a common market in which state lines cannot be made barriers to the free flow of both raw materials and finished goods in response to the economic laws of supply and demand. See Great A&P Tea Co. v. Cottrell, 424 U. S. 366, 370-371 (1976). Appellee concedes that until the 1974 amendment the Maryland system operated in conformity with the common-market principle. There was free competition among licensed processors for Maryland hulks from unlicensed suppliers and an unimpeded flow of such hulks out of Maryland to appellee and other non-Maryland processors. The only effect of the bounty was to enhance the value of hulks and thus make it more likely that they would be moved to processing plants.

The practical effect of the amendment, however, was to limit the enhanced price available to unlicensed suppliers to hulks that stayed inside Maryland, thus discouraging such suppliers from taking their hulks out of State for processing. The result was that the movement of hulks in interstate commerce was reduced.^[13] Appellee *804 contends that this effect of the 1974 amendment is a "burden" on interstate commerce, the permissibility of which must be determined under the test of Pike v. Bruce Church, Inc., 397 U. S. 137, 142 (1970). The Court there stated that "the extent of the burden that will be tolerated will . . . depend on the nature of the local interest involved, and on whether it could be promoted as well with a lesser impact on interstate activities." See also Great A&P Tea Co. v. Cottrell, supra, at 371-372.

The District Court accepted appellee's analysis, and concluded that the 1974 amendment failed the Pike test. First, the court found that the amendment did impose "substantial burdens upon the free flow of interstate commerce." 391 F. Supp., at 62. Moreover, it considered the disadvantage suffered by out-of-state processors to be particularly suspect under previous decisions of this Court, noting that to avoid the disadvantage those processors would have to build new plants inside Maryland to carry on a business which, prior to the amendment, they had pursued efficiently outside the State. See Foster-Fountain Packing Co. v. Haydel, 278 U. S. 1 (1928); Pike v. Bruce Church, Inc., supra, at 145. Maryland's principal argument in support of the amendment was that, by making it difficult for out-of-state processors to claim bounties on hulks delivered by unlicensed suppliers, the amendment tends to reduce the amount of state funds paid for destruction of Maryland-titled hulks abandoned in the States where those processors are *805 located instead of in Maryland. The District Court acknowledged the validity of this interest, but considered the means employed inappropriate under Pike because the same interest could have been furthered, with less impact upon interstate commerce, by amending the statute to condition the bounty upon a hulk's abandonment in Maryland instead of its previous titling there.^[14]

This line of reasoning is not without force if its basic premise is accepted. That premise is that every action by a State that has the effect of reducing in some manner the flow of goods in interstate commerce is potentially an impermissible burden. But we are not persuaded that Maryland's action in amending its statute was the kind of action with which the Commerce Clause is concerned.

The situation presented by this statute and the 1974 amendment is quite unlike that found in the cases upon which appellee relies. In the most recent of those cases, Pike v. Bruce Church, supra, a burden was found to be imposed by an Arizona requirement that fresh fruit grown in the State be packed there before shipment interstate. The requirement prohibited the interstate shipment of fruit in bulk, no matter what the market demand for such shipments. In H. P. Hood & Sons v. Du Mond, 336 U. S. 525 (1949), a New York official denied a license to a milk distributor who wanted to open a new plant at which to receive raw milk from New York farmers for immediate shipment to Boston. The denial blocked a potential increase in the interstate movement of raw milk. Appellee also relies upon Toomer v. Witsell, 334 U. S. 385 (1948), in which this Court found interstate commerce in raw shrimp to be burdened by a South Carolina requirement that shrimp boats fishing off its coast dock in South Carolina and pack and pay taxes on their catches before transporting *806 them interstate. The requirement increased the cost of shipping such shrimp interstate. In Foster-Fountain Packing Co. v. Haydel, 278 U. S. 1 (1928), a Louisiana statute forbade export of Louisiana shrimp until they had been shelled and beheaded, thus impeding the natural flow of freshly caught shrimp to canners in other States. Both Shafer v. Farmers Grain Co., 268 U. S. 189 (1925), and Lemke v. Farmers Grain Co., 258 U. S. 50 (1922), involved efforts by North Dakota to regulate and thus disrupt the interstate market in grain by imposing burdensome regulations upon and controlling the profit margin of corporations that purchased grain in State for shipment and sale outside the State. And in Pennsylvania v. West Virginia, 262 U. S. 553 (1923), the Court found a burden upon the established interstate commerce in natural gas when a new West Virginia statute required domestic producers to supply all domestic needs before piping the surplus, if any, to other States.

The common thread of all these cases is that the State interfered with the natural functioning of the interstate market either through prohibition or through burdensome regulation. By contrast, Maryland has not sought to prohibit the flow of hulks, or to regulate the conditions under which it may occur. Instead, it has entered into the market itself to bid up their price. There has been an impact upon the interstate flow of hulks only because, since the 1974 amendment, Maryland effectively has made it more lucrative for unlicensed suppliers to dispose of their hulks in Maryland rather than take them outside the State.^[15]

*807 Appellee recognizes that the situation presented by this case is without precedent in this Court. It argues that the 1974 amendment nevertheless must be subjected to the same scrutiny as the state actions in earlier cases, because "[w]hat is controlling . . . is not the means by which Maryland has chosen to discriminate, but the practical effect of that discrimination upon interstate commerce." Brief for Appellee 63. In short, appellee urges that the alleged burden upon interstate commerce from the 1974 amendment "is not immunized by its novelty." Ibid.

We believe, however, that the novelty of this case is not its presentation of a new form of "burden" upon commerce, but that appellee should characterize Maryland's action as a burden which the Commerce Clause was intended to make suspect. The Clause was designed in part to prevent trade barriers that had undermined efforts of the fledgling States to form a cohesive whole following their victory in the Revolution.^[16] This *808 aspect of the Clause's purpose was eloquently expressed by Mr. Justice Jackson:

"Our system, fostered by the Commerce Clause, is that every farmer and every craftsman shall be encouraged to produce by the certainty that he will have free access to every market in the Nation, that no home embargoes will withhold his exports, and no foreign state will by customs duties or regulations exclude them. Likewise, every consumer may look to the free competition from every producing area in the Nation to protect him from exploitation by any. Such was the vision of the Founders; such has been the doctrine of this Court which has given it reality. . . ." H. P. Hood & Sons v. Du Mond, supra, at 539.

In realizing the Founders' vision this Court has adhered strictly to the principle "that the right to engage in interstate commerce is not the gift of a state, and that a state cannot regulate or restrain it." Id., at 535.^[17] But until today the Court has not been asked to hold that the entry by the State itself into the market as a purchaser, in effect, of a potential article of interstate commerce creates a burden upon that commerce if the State restricts its trade to its own citizens or businesses within the State.

*809 We do not believe the Commerce Clause was intended to require independent justification for such action. Maryland entered the market for the purpose, agreed by all to be commendable as well as legitimate, of protecting the State's environment. As the means of furthering this purpose, it elected the payment of state funds—in the form of bounties—to encourage the removal of automobile hulks from Maryland streets and junkyards. It is true that the state money initially was made available to licensed out-of-state processors as well as those located within Maryland, and not until the 1974 amendment was the financial benefit channeled, in practical effect, to domestic processors. But this chronology does not distinguish the case, for Commerce Clause purposes, from one in which a State offered bounties only to domestic processors from the start.^[18] Regardless of when the State's largesse is first confined to domestic processors, the effect upon the flow of hulks resting within the State is the same: they will tend to be processed inside the State rather than flowing to foreign processors. But no *810 trade barrier of the type forbidden by the Commerce Clause, and involved in previous cases, impedes their movement out of State. They remain within Maryland in response to market forces, including that exerted by money from the State. Nothing in the purposes animating the Commerce Clause prohibits a State, in the absence of congressional action,^[19] from participating in the market and exercising the right to favor its own citizens over others.^[20]

III

The District Court also found the 1974 amendment to be violative of the Equal Protection Clause.^[21] Appellee *811 supports this holding by contending that no difference between the operations of foreign and domestic processors justifies denying to the former the right to use indemnity agreements, and that this discriminatory denial furthers no legitimate state purpose. Maryland, having licensed out-of-state processors, does not justify the amendment's distinction on the basis of any difference in the manner of operation. But Maryland does insist that several state interests are served by it. We agree with Maryland with respect to its primary justification for the 1974 amendment, and thus find it unnecessary to consider other interests that also may be furthered.

Maryland argues that the distinction between domestic and foreign processors in the 1974 amendment is related to the basic statutory purpose of clearing Maryland's landscape of abandoned automobiles. Underlying this argument are the complementary assumptions that hulks delivered to Maryland processors are likely to have been abandoned in Maryland, and those delivered to non-Maryland processors are likely to have been abandoned outside Maryland. Based upon those assumptions, the *812 State contends that the 1974 amendment, by making it easy for an in-state processor to receive bounties but difficult for an out-of-state processor to do so, tends to ensure that the State's limited resources are targeted to hulks abandoned inside Maryland as opposed to some contiguous State.

The District Court rejected this argument with the observation that Maryland had "not proffered a scintilla of factual support for [its] assumption that nonresident processors are more likely than in-state processors to claim bounties for vehicles abandoned outside of Maryland." 391 F. Supp., at 57. The District Court demanded too much. Maryland's underlying assumptions certainly are not irrational: in terms of likelihood, the Maryland Legislature reasonably could assume that a hulk destroyed by a non-Maryland processor is more likely to have been abandoned outside Maryland than is a hulk destroyed by a Maryland processor, and vice versa. The State is not compelled to verify logical assumptions with statistical evidence.^[22]

Appellee contends that the alleged relationship of the amendment to the statutory purpose is belied by a "loophole" in the statute that remains even after the amendment. This "loophole" results from the fact that the statute conditions the payment of bounty upon previous titling of a vehicle in Maryland, rather than upon proof of its abandonment in that State. Thus, even after the 1974 amendment an in-state processor remains free to *813 recover bounties on hulks previously titled in Maryland but delivered to it after abandonment elsewhere. A more discriminating effort to achieve the statutory purposes, according to appellee, would have changed the statute to condition the bounty upon proof of abandonment in Maryland.^[23]

It is well established, however, that a statutory classification impinging upon no fundamental interest, and especially one dealing only with economic matters, need not be drawn so as to fit with precision the legitimate purposes animating it. Williamson v. Lee Optical Co., 348 U. S. 483, 489 (1955). That Maryland might have furthered its underlying purpose more artfully, more directly, or more completely, does not warrant a conclusion that the method it chose is unconstitutional. See Katzenbach v. Morgan, 384 U. S. 641, 657 (1966).

Moreover, the statute in its present form still allows payment of bounty on a hulk to a non-Maryland processor upon proper documentation of title. The logic in support of the 1974 amendment—that Maryland processors are more likely than out-of-state processors to *814 destroy hulks abandoned inside the State—suggests the rationality of Maryland's discontinuing bounties to out-of-state processors altogether. If Maryland could do that, we are not prepared to say that it is forbidden to go part of the way by an amendment that has the practical effect, through the distinction as to documentation of title, of substantially curtailing bounty payments to out-of-state processors.^[24]

Few would contend that Maryland has taken the straightest road to its goal, either in its original drafting of the statute or in the refinement introduced by the 1974 amendment. But in the area in which this bounty scheme operates the Equal Protection Clause does not demand a surveyor's precision. The 1974 amendment bears a rational relationship to Maryland's purpose of using its limited funds to clean up its own environment, and that is all the Constitution requires. See Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U. S. 471, 486-487 (1970); San Antonio School Dist. v. Rodriguez, 411 U. S. 1, 44 (1973); McGinnis v. Royster, 410 U. S. 263, 270, 276-277 (1973).

We hold that the District Court erred in finding the 1974 amendment invalid under either the Commerce Clause or the Equal Protection Clause. Accordingly, its judgment is reversed.

So ordered.

MR. JUSTICE STEVENS, concurring.

The dissent creates the impression that the Court's opinion, which I join without reservation, represents a significant retreat from its settled practice in adjudicating *815 claims that a state program places an unconstitutional burden on interstate commerce. This is not the fact. There is no prior decision of this Court even addressing the critical Commerce Clause issue presented by this case.

It is important to differentiate between commerce which flourishes in a free market and commerce which owes its existence to a state subsidy program. Our cases finding that a state regulation constitutes an impermissible burden on interstate commerce all dealt with restrictions that adversely affected the operation of a free market. This case is unique because the commerce which Maryland has "burdened" is commerce which would not exist if Maryland had not decided to subsidize a portion of the automobile scrap-processing business.

By artificially enhancing the value of certain abandoned hulks, Maryland created a market that did not previously exist.^[*] The program which Maryland initiated in 1969 included subsidies for scrapping plants located in Virginia and Pennsylvania as well as for plants located in Maryland. Those subsides stimulated the movement of abandoned hulks from Maryland to out-of-state scrapping plants and thereby gave rise to the interstate commerce which is at stake in this litigation.

That commerce, which is now said to be burdened, would never have existed if in the first instance Maryland had decided to confine its subsidy to operators of Maryland plants. A failure to create that commerce would have been unobjectionable because the Commerce Clause surely does not impose on the State any obligation *816 to subsidize out-of-state business. Nor, in my judgment, does that Clause inhibit a State's power to experiment with different methods of encouraging local industry. Whether the encouragement takes the form of a cash subsidy, a tax credit, or a special privilege intended to attract investment capital, it should not be characterized as a "burden" on commerce. Accordingly, the program in effect in Maryland since 1974 could hardly have been challenged if it had been adopted in 1969.

Since Maryland did subsidize Virginia and Pennsylvania plants from 1969 to 1974, it is easy to describe the elimination of the out-of-state subsidy as a burden on interstate commerce. Indeed, we may assume that the temporarily subsidized interstate business has now been totally eliminated. It does not follow, however, that such a "burden" is impermissible.

Unquestionably Maryland could terminate its entire program, discontinuing subsidy payments to Maryland operators as well as out-of-state firms, without offending the Constitution. Since, by hypothesis, we are dealing with a business that is dependent on the availability of subsidy payments, such a complete termination of Maryland's program would have precisely the same effect on the out-of-state plants as the partial termination effected in 1974. The "burden" on the Virginia processor is caused by the nonreceipt of the subsidy, regardless of whether or not Maryland elects to continue to subsidize its local plants. It follows, I believe, that the constitutional issue presented by the 1974 amendment is the same as the question which would have arisen if Maryland had never made the subsidy available to out-of-state concerns.

This is the first case in which any litigant has asked a federal court to address the question whether a state *817 subsidy constitutes a "burden" on interstate commerce. That fact is significant because there must have been countless situations during the past two centuries in which the several States have experimented with different methods of encouraging local enterprise without providing like encouragement to out-of-state competitors. The absence of any previous challenge to such programs reflects, I believe, a common and correct interpretation of the Commerce Clause as primarily intended (at least when Congress has not spoken) to inhibit the several States' power to create restrictions on the free flow of goods within the national market, rather than to provide the basis for questioning a State's right to experiment with different incentives to business. The District Court's novel interpretation of the "burden" concept represented a departure which, had it been accepted, would impair rather than protect interstate commerce.

MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN, with whom MR. JUSTICE WHITE and MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL join, dissenting.

The Court continues its reinterpretation of the Commerce Clause and its repudiation of established principles guiding judicial analysis thereunder—in this case shifting its focus from congressional power arising under the Commerce Clause, see National League of Cities v. Usery, post, p. 833, to the role of this Court in considering the constitutionality of state action claimed impermissibly to burden interstate commerce. Principles of legal analysis heretofore employed in our cases considering claims under the Commerce Clause, e. g., South Carolina Hwy. Dept. v. Barnwell Bros., 303 U. S. 177 (1938); Southern Pacific Co. v. Arizona ex rel. Sullivan, 325 U. S. 761 (1945); H. P. Hood & Sons, Inc. v. Du Mond, 336 U. S. 525 (1949); Bibb v. Navajo Freight Lines, 359 U. S. 520 *818 (1959); Pike v. Bruce Church, Inc., 397 U. S. 137 (1970); Great A&P Tea Co. v. Cottrell, 424 U. S. 366 (1976), are ignored,^[1] and an area of state action plainly burdening interstate commerce, an area not easily susceptible of principled limitation, is judicially carved out and summarily labeled as not "the kind of action with which the Commerce Clause is concerned." Ante, at 805. I cannot agree that well-established principles for analyzing claims arising under the Commerce Clause are inapplicable merely because of the "kind of [state] action" involved, or that it is defensible that legal analysis should cease, irrespective of the impact on commerce or the other facts and circumstances of the case, merely because the Court somehow categorically determines that the instant case involves "a burden which the Commerce Clause was [not] intended to make suspect." Ante, at 807.^[2] In my view, "[e]very case determining whether or not a local regulation amounts to a prohibited `burden' on interstate commerce belongs at some point along a graduated scale." H. P. Hood & Sons, Inc. v. Du Mond, supra, at 568 n. 2 (Frankfurter, J., dissenting). Therefore, I am "constrained to dissent because I cannot agree *819 in treating what is essentially a problem of striking a balance between competing interests as an exercise in absolutes." Id., at 564.

I

I note that appellants do not claim and the Court does not and could not find that the market for scrap metal— including its processing—is not interstate commerce. In addition, there is no claim by appellee that Maryland, if it wishes to run a bounty program to achieve its environmental objectives, must pay a bounty on all scrap hulks irrespective of their State of origin as abandoned vehicles. Plainly Maryland pursuant to its environmental program may "artificially enhance" the price of only those hulks originating as abandoned vehicles within its boundaries. The only questions respecting the Commerce Clause concern the issue of whether Maryland may in effect require that the processing of such scrap, an aspect of its program not obviously related in the first instance to its environmental objectives, be restricted to processors located within the State in light of the asserted governmental objectives in so doing and the consequent effect upon interstate commerce.

However, I cannot agree with the Court that this case is solely to be analyzed in terms of Maryland's "purchase" of items of interstate commerce and its restriction of such "purchases" to items processed in its own State. The result of this single-minded concept of the issues presented is that the Court in my view not only erroneously decides a weighty constitutional question not previously directly addressed by this Court, but also that it ignores another and equally pressing issue under the Commerce Clause.

II

I first address the question that the Court answers: the question whether a State may restrict its purchases *820 of items of interstate commerce to items produced, manufactured, or processed within its own boundaries. When a State so restricts purchases for its own use, it does not affect the total flow of interstate commerce, but rather precludes only that quantum that would otherwise occur if the State were to behave as a private and disinterested purchaser. Nevertheless, it cannot be gainsaid that a State's refusal for purposes of economic protectionism to purchase for end use items produced elsewhere is a facial and obvious "discrimination against interstate commerce" that we have often said "[t]he commerce clause, by its own force, prohibits . . . , whatever its form or method." South Carolina Hwy. Dept. v. Barnwell Bros., 303 U. S., at 185. See H. P. Hood & Sons, Inc. v. Du Mond, 336 U. S., at 535; Best & Co. v. Maxwell, 311 U. S. 454, 455-456 (1940); Pennsylvania v. West Virginia, 262 U. S. 553, 596 (1923). Clearly the "aim and effect" of such a discrimination is "establishing an economic barrier against competition with the products of another state or the labor of its residents," Baldwin v. G. A. F. Seelig, Inc., 294 U. S. 511, 527 (1935). Certainly the Court's naked assertion today that "[n]othing in the purposes animating the Commerce Clause prohibits a State . . . from participating in the market and exercising the right to favor its own citizens over others," ante, at 810, stands in stark contrast to our "repeated emphasis upon the principle that the State may not promote its own economic advantages by curtailment or burdening of interstate commerce." H. P. Hood & Sons, Inc. v. Du Mond, supra, at 532.

Moreover, the particular form of discrimination arising when the State restricts its purchases for use to items produced in its own State is of a kind particularly suspect under our precedents, as it is aimed directly at requiring *821 the relocation of labor and industry within the bounds of the State, thus tending "to neutralize advantages belonging to" other States, Baldwin v. G. A. F. Seelig, Inc., supra, at 527; Halliburton Oil Well Co. v. Reily, 373 U. S. 64, 72 (1963), and forcing "an artificial rigidity on the economic pattern of the industry." Toomer v. Witsell, 334 U. S. 385, 404 (1948). See Foster-Fountain Packing Co. v. Haydel, 278 U. S. 1 (1928). We have "viewed with particular suspicion state statutes requiring business operations to be performed in the home State that could more efficiently be performed elsewhere. Even where the State is pursuing a clearly legitimate local interest, this particular burden on commerce has been declared to be virtually per se illegal." Pike v. Bruce Church, Inc., 397 U. S., at 145 (emphasis supplied). And we have never held protection of a State's own citizens from the burden of economic competition with citizens of other States to be such a "clearly legitimate local interest." See, e. g., H. P. Hood & Sons, Inc., supra; Baldwin v. G. A. F. Seelig, Inc., supra. Patently, so to hold "would be to eat up the rule under the guise of an exception." 294 U. S., at 523.

It is true, as the Court notes, that we have not previously directly addressed the question whether, when a State enters the market as purchaser for end use of items in interstate commerce, it may "[restrict] its trade to its own citizens or business within the State." Ante, at 808.^[3] The novelty of the question, however, does not *822 justify the Court's conclusory assertion, without analysis employing established constitutional principles or policies, that "[n]othing in the purposes animating the Commerce Clause prohibits a State . . . from participating in the market and exercising the right to favor its own citizens over others." Ante, at 810. Certainly the Court does not attempt to tell us the source of any such "right."^[4] Others have argued that the barriers to interstate commerce imposed by restrictive state purchasing policies are already of great significance, Melder, The *823 Economics of Trade Barriers, 16 Ind. L. J. 127, 139-141 (1940), and other courts have refused, "in the light of the expanding proprietary activities of the states," invitations to forgo all Commerce Clause analysis merely because the State is acting in a proprietary purchasing capacity in implementing its discriminatory policies. Garden State Dairies of Vineland, Inc. v. Sills, 46 N. J. 349, 358, 217 A. 2d 126, 130 (1966). See also Recent Cases, 80 Harv. L. Rev. 1357, 1360-1361 (1967).

I would hold, consistent with accepted Commerce Clause principles, that state statutes that facially or in practical effect restrict state purchases of items in interstate commerce to those produced within the State are invalid unless justified by asserted state interests—other than economic protectionism—in regulating matters of local concern for which "reasonable nondiscriminatory alternatives, adequate to conserve legitimate local interests, are [not] available." Dean Milk Co. v. Madison, 340 U. S. 349, 354 (1951). See Great A&P Tea Co. v. Cottrell, 424 U. S., at 373; Pike v. Bruce Church, Inc., supra, at 142; Polar Ice Cream & Creamery Co. v. Andrews, 375 U. S. 361, 375 n. 9 (1964); Baldwin v. G. A. F. Seelig, Inc., supra, at 524.^[5]

*824 III

Second, the Court's insistence on viewing this case as qualitatively different under the Commerce Clause merely because the State is in some sense acting as a "purchaser" of the affected items of commerce leads it completely to forgo analysis of another equally vital question. For even those courts and commentators that have concluded that facially restrictive state purchasing statutes are permissible under the Commerce Clause, e. g., American Yearbook Co. v. Askew,