| City of Philadelphia v. New Jersey
(No. 77-404)
73 N.J. 562, 376 A.2d 888, reversed. |
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| Syllabus
| Opinion
[ Stewart ] | Dissent
[ Rehnquist ] |
| HTML version
PDF version | HTML version
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City of Philadelphia v. New Jersey
APPEAL FROM THE SUPREME COURT OF NEW JERSEY
MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE joins, dissenting.
A growing problem in our Nation is the sanitary treatment and disposal of solid waste. [n1] For many years, solid waste was [p630] incinerated. Because of the significant environmental problems attendant on incineration, however, this method of solid waste disposal has declined in use in many localities, including New Jersey. "Sanitary" landfills have replaced incineration as the principal method of disposing of solid waste. In ch. 363 of the 1973 N.J.Laws, the State of New Jersey legislatively recognized the unfortunate fact that landfills also present extremely serious health and safety problems. First, in New Jersey,
virtually all sanitary landfills can be expected to produce leachate, a noxious and highly polluted liquid which is seldom visible and frequently pollutes . . . ground and surface waters.
App. 149. The natural decomposition process which occurs in landfills also produces large quantities of methane, and thereby presents a significant explosion hazard. Id. at 149, 156-157. Landfills can also generate "health hazards caused by rodents, fires and scavenger birds" and, "needless to say, do not help New Jersey's aesthetic appearance nor New Jersey's noise or water or air pollution problems." Supp. App. 5
The health and safety hazards associated with landfills present appellees with a currently unsolvable dilemma. Other, hopefully safer, methods of disposing of solid wastes are still in the development stage, and cannot presently be used. But appellees obviously cannot completely stop the tide of solid waste that its citizens will produce in the interim. For the moment, therefore, appellees must continue to use sanitary landfills to dispose of New Jersey's own solid waste despite the critical environmental problems thereby created. [p631]
The question presented in this case is whether New Jersey must also continue to receive and dispose of solid waste from neighboring States, even though these will inexorably increase the health problems discussed above. [n2] The Court answers this question in the affirmative. New Jersey must either prohibit all landfill operations, leaving itself to cast about for a presently nonexistent solution to the serious problem of disposing of the waste generated within its own borders, or it must accept waste from every portion of the United States, thereby multiplying the health and safety problems which would result if it dealt only with such wastes generated within the State. Because past precedents establish that the Commerce Clause does not present appellees with such a Hobson's choice, I dissent.
The Court recognizes, ante at 621-622, that States can prohibit the importation of items
"which, on account of their existing condition, would bring in and spread disease, pestilence, and death, such as rags or other substances infected with the germs of yellow fever or the virus of small-pox, or cattle or meat or other provisions that are diseased or decayed, or otherwise, from their condition and quality, unfit for human use or consumption."
Bowman v. Chicago Northwestern R. Co., 125 U.S. 465, 489 (1888). See Baldwin v. G.A.F. Seelig, Inc., 294 U.S. 511, 525 (1935); Sligh v. Kirkwood, 237 U.S. 52, 59-60 (1915); Asbell v. Kansas, 209 U.S. 251 (1908); Railroad Co. v. Husen, 95 U.S. 465, 472 (1878). As the Court points out, such "quarantine laws have not been considered forbidden protectionist measures, even though they were directed against out-of-state commerce." Ante at 628 (emphasis added). [p632]
In my opinion, these cases are dispositive of the present one. Under them, New Jersey may require germ-infected rags or diseased meat to be disposed of as best as possible within the State, but at the same time prohibit the importation of such items for disposal at the facilities that are set up within New Jersey for disposal of such material generated within the State. The physical fact of life that New Jersey must somehow dispose of its own noxious items does not mean that it must serve as a depository for those of every other State. Similarly, New Jersey should be free under our past precedents to prohibit the importation of solid waste because of the health and safety problems that such waste poses to its citizens. The fact that New Jersey continues to, and indeed must continue to, dispose of its own solid waste does not mean that New Jersey may not prohibit the importation of even more solid waste into the State. I simply see no way to distinguish solid waste, on the record of this case, from germ-infected rags, diseased meat, and other noxious items.
The Court's effort to distinguish these prior cases is unconvincing. It first asserts that the quarantine laws which have previously been upheld
banned the importation of articles such as diseased livestock that required destruction as soon as possible because their very movement risked contagion and other evils.
Ante at 628-629. According to the Court, the New Jersey law is distinguishable from these other laws, and invalid, because the concern of New Jersey is not with the movement of solid waste, but with the present inability to safely dispose of it once it reaches its destination. But I think it far from clear that the State's law has as limited a focus as the Court imputes to it: solid waste which is a health hazard when it reaches its destination may, in all likelihood, be an equally great health hazard in transit.
Even if the Court is correct in its characterization of New Jersey's concerns, I do not see why a State may ban the importation of items whose movement risks contagion, but [p633] cannot ban the importation of items which, although they may be transported into the State without undue hazard, will then simply pile up in an ever increasing danger to the public's health and safety. The Commerce Clause was not dawn with a view to having the validity of state laws turn on such pointless distinctions.
Second, the Court implies that the challenged laws must be invalidated because New Jersey has left its landfills open to domestic waste. But, as the Court notes, ante at 628, this Court has repeatedly upheld quarantine laws "even though they appear to single out interstate commerce for special treatment." The fact that New Jersey has left its landfill sites open for domestic waste does not, of course, mean that solid waste is not innately harmful. Nor does it mean that New Jersey prohibits importation of solid waste for reasons other than the health and safety of its population. New Jersey must, out of sheer necessity, treat and dispose of its solid waste in some fashion, just as it must treat New Jersey cattle suffering from hoof-and-mouth disease. It does not follow that New Jersey must, under the Commerce Clause, accept solid waste or diseased cattle from outside its borders, and thereby exacerbate its problems.
The Supreme Court of New Jersey expressly found that ch. 363 was passed "to preserve the health of New Jersey residents by keeping their exposure to solid waste and landfill areas to a minimum." 68 N.J. 451, 473, 348 A.2d 505, 516. The Court points to absolutely no evidence that would contradict this finding by the New Jersey Supreme Court. Because I find no basis for distinguishing the laws under challenge here from our past cases upholding state laws that prohibit the importation of items that could endanger the population of the State, I dissent.
1. Congress specifically recognized the substantial dangers to the environment and public health that are posed by current methods of disposing of solid waste in the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976, 90 Stat. 2795. As the Court recognizes, ante at 621 n. 4, the laws under challenge here "can be enforced consistently with the program goals and the respective federal-state roles intended by Congress when it enacted" this and other legislation, and are thus not preempted by any federal statutes.
2. Regulations of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection "except from the ban on out-of-state refuse those types of solid waste which may have a value for recycling or for use as fuel." App. 47. Thus, the ban under challenge would appear to be strictly limited to that waste which will be disposed of in sanitary landfills, and thereby pose health and safety dangers to the citizens of New Jersey.
