## Facts

- California adopted animal-confinement standards for egg-laying hens and prohibited the in-state sale of shell eggs produced in violation of those standards, regardless of where produced.
- Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Alabama, Kentucky, and Iowa (collectively, the plaintiff states) were significant egg-producing jurisdictions that exported eggs to California.
- The plaintiff states alleged the California scheme would force out-of-state producers to incur major facility-modification costs or lose access to the California market.
- They claimed downstream economic effects on their citizens and economies, including higher egg prices, job losses, and other economic harms.
- The plaintiff states sued California’s Attorney General and the Secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief on dormant Commerce Clause grounds.
- No private egg producer was a party; the states asserted standing primarily as parens patriae on behalf of their citizens and economies.
- The district court dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, holding the plaintiff states lacked parens patriae standing.
- The plaintiff states appealed; the Ninth Circuit reviewed the Rule 12(b)(1) dismissal on standing grounds and did not reach the merits.

## Issues

1. Whether the plaintiff states had parens patriae standing to challenge California’s egg-production and egg-sales requirements where the alleged harms were largely derivative of out-of-state producers’ economic interests and asserted future economic effects.
2. Whether, upon finding no standing, dismissal should be with prejudice or without prejudice.

## Decision

- The Ninth Circuit affirmed the determination that the plaintiff states lacked parens patriae standing.
- The court held the states did not plead a quasi-sovereign interest distinct from the interests of particular private egg producers that could sue on their own behalf.
- The court held the alleged downstream harms to consumers and state economies were speculative because they depended on predictions about future market effects before implementation.
- The court rejected a discrimination-based standing theory because the challenged requirements applied equally to in-state and out-of-state eggs and did not distinguish by state of origin.
- The Ninth Circuit remanded with instructions to modify the judgment to a dismissal without prejudice, because the states might later allege concrete, post-implementation injuries.

## Legal Principles

- Parens patriae standing requires a state to assert a quasi-sovereign interest independent of, and not merely derivative of, particular private parties’ economic interests.
- Predicted future market effects, asserted before a law’s implementation, generally do not satisfy the injury-in-fact requirement because they are conjectural rather than a realistic danger of direct injury.
- A state’s parens patriae interest based on protection from unequal treatment is weakened where the challenged law is facially nondiscriminatory and applies the same standard to in-state and out-of-state actors.
- When dismissal rests on lack of standing tied to speculative, pre-implementation allegations, dismissal should be without prejudice if post-implementation facts could potentially support standing.

## Conclusion

The Ninth Circuit held that the plaintiff states could not use parens patriae standing to challenge California’s egg standards based on harms that were primarily those of private egg producers and on conjectural economic effects, and it required the action to be dismissed without prejudice rather than with prejudice.


State ex rel. Koster v. Harris, 847 F.3d 646 (9th Cir. 2017)