## Facts

- Madison, Wisconsin adopted an ordinance regulating the sale of milk within the city.
- The ordinance prohibited selling milk “as pasteurized” unless it was pasteurized and bottled at an approved plant within five miles of Madison’s center.
- Dean Milk Company, an Illinois corporation collecting and distributing milk from Illinois and Wisconsin farms, operated pasteurization plants located 65 and 85 miles from Madison.
- Madison denied Dean a license to sell milk in the city solely because its plants were outside the five-mile radius.
- A separate ordinance provision conditioned sale on a permit issued after inspection by city officials and expressly relieved officials of any duty to inspect farms located more than 25 miles from the city.
- Dean challenged both provisions under the Commerce Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment.
- The Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the five-mile pasteurization requirement and dismissed the challenge to the 25-mile inspection provision for lack of a justiciable controversy.

## Issues

1. Whether the five-mile pasteurization-and-bottling requirement discriminated against interstate commerce in violation of the Commerce Clause.
2. Whether any discrimination could be justified by local public health interests when reasonable, nondiscriminatory alternatives were available.
3. Whether the challenge to the separate 25-mile inspection-permit provision presented a justiciable controversy and, if so, how it should be handled.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed the judgment sustaining the five-mile requirement.
- The Court held the five-mile pasteurization requirement unjustifiably discriminated against interstate commerce and violated the Commerce Clause.
- The Court concluded Madison could protect public health through reasonable, nondiscriminatory alternatives, including inspection of out-of-area producers and charging reasonable inspection costs.
- The Court remanded for further proceedings regarding the 25-mile inspection-permit provision consistent with the Court’s Commerce Clause analysis.

## Legal Principles

- A local regulation that erects an economic barrier protecting local industry from out-of-state competition is discriminatory under the dormant Commerce Clause.
- Discriminatory regulations are invalid where reasonable, adequate, nondiscriminatory alternatives can protect legitimate local health and safety interests.
- A municipality may inspect out-of-area producers and charge actual, reasonable inspection costs as a less discriminatory means of ensuring product safety.
- The fact that some in-state producers are also burdened does not cure a measure that, in operation, excludes or disadvantages products from outside the local area.

## Conclusion

The Court invalidated Madison’s five-mile pasteurization requirement because it functioned as protectionist discrimination against interstate commerce and was unnecessary given available nondiscriminatory means to safeguard milk safety, and it remanded for further consideration of the ordinance’s separate inspection-permit limitation.


Dean Milk Co. v. City of Madison, 340 U.S. 349 (1951)