1963 United States Supreme Court case
Florida Lime &amp; Avocado Growers, Inc. v. Paul, 373 U.S. 132 (1963), was a 1963 decision of the United States Supreme Court in which the Court declined to invalidate a California law that imposed minimum fat content standards on avocados sold in the state, including those imported from other states. The law prohibited the sale of avocados that did not contain at least 8% oil by weight. Florida, a major avocado producer, employed, for wholesale marketing purposes, a federal standard unrelated to oil content. Most Florida avocados that were marketable at home failed to meet the California standard, because they were a different variety from those sold in California, with a lower fat content. Accordingly, Florida avocado growers brought this suit, arguing (unsuccessfully) that the California law (1) was preempted by federal law, (2) violated equal protection, and (3) unduly burdened and interfered with their right to engage in interstate commerce. The case is widely used in law school casebooks on constitutional law and federal jurisdiction as illustrative of preemption issues.
Background.
There are three principal races or groups of avocado: Mexican, Guatemalan and West Indian, named for the areas where they were originally cultivated. Mexican avocados have foliage with an anise scent and small fruits about the size of a plum, with black or purple smooth skin. Guatemalan avocados have larger, blackish-green, rough-skinned fruits. The West Indian avocado has the largest fruits, up to 2 lbs (1 kg), with smooth light green skin. Mexican avocados have the highest oil content; West Indian the lowest. The important cultivars now in commercial production are mostly hybrids between these three original races.
In 1925, California enacted a law requiring that "all avocados, at the time of picking, and at all times thereafter, shall contain not less than 8 percent of oil, by weight of the avocado excluding the skin and seed." In 1925, practically all the avocados in the United States came from California. The purpose of this legislation was to prevent the marketing of immature avocados, which never ripen properly, but decay or shrivel up and become rubbery and unpalatable. The effect of marketing immature avocados is to antagonize consumers; this increases future sales resistance against buying avocados.
In 1925, most of the avocados grown in California were, as they are at the present time, from trees derived from Mexican varieties (e.g. Haas avocados). Such avocados contain at least 8% oil when mature. The Florida avocado growers, however, mostly cultivate West Indian, Guatemalan, and hybrid varieties, which may reach maturity and be acceptable and reach their prime for marketing prior to reaching an 8% oil content, or they may never reach that level of oil content. All members of the Court agreed that there is no health issue; the question is "a purely economic one."
The Florida avocado growers objected to the California law because it severely restricts the access of Florida growers to the California market.
While California's avocado maturity standard is provided by statute, Florida's is set by a marketing order under the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), a New Deal measure creating a regime of self-government for farmers, designed to "promote orderly competition among the South Florida growers" of avocados. The marketing orders for avocados are drafted by the South Florida Avocado Administrative Committee, which consists entirely of representatives of the growers concerned. The Secretary of Agriculture invariably adopts the committee's recommendations for avocado maturity dates, sizes, and weights.
Proceedings in district court.
Because the Florida avocado growers sued to enjoin the enforcement against them of the California law because it was unconstitutional, the case was brought before a three-judge district court. The growers challenged the constitutionality of the statute on three grounds:
(1) that, under the Supremacy Clause, the California standard must be deemed displaced by the federal standard for determining the maturity of avocados grown in Florida;
(2) that the application of the California statute to Florida-grown avocados denied appellants the Equal Protection of the Laws, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment; and
(3) that its application unreasonably burdened or discriminated against interstate marketing of Florida-grown avocados in violation of the Commerce Clause.
At the initial stage of the case, the three-judge district court dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds, finding that there was not a current justiciable case or controversy. On direct appeal, the Supreme Court held that the suit was one for a three-judge court and presented a justiciable controversy to be tried on the merits.
After a trial, the three-judge court denied an injunction against the enforcement of § 792 on the ground that the proofs did not establish that its application to Florida avocados violated any provision of the Federal Constitution. The District Court held for several reasons that the Supremacy Clause did not operate to displace § 792: (1) no actual conflict existed between the statute and the federal marketing orders; (2) neither the AAA nor the marketing orders occupied the field to the exclusion of the state statute, and (3) Congress had not ordained that a federal marketing order was to give a license to Florida producers to "market their avocados without further inspection by the states" after compliance with the federal maturity test.
Rather, the court observed, "[t]he Federal law does not cover the whole field of interstate shipment of avocados," but, by necessary implication, leaves the regulation of certain aspects of their distribution to the States. Further, the District Court found no violation of the Equal Protection Clause, because the California statute was applicable on identical terms to Florida and California producers, and was reasonably designed to enforce a traditional and legitimate interest of the State of California in the protection of California consumers. The District Court concluded, finally, that § 792 did not unreasonably burden or discriminate against interstate commerce in out-of-state avocados—that the 8% oil content test served, in practice, only to keep off California grocers' shelves fruit which was unpalatable because prematurely picked. This holding rested, in part, on the conclusion that mature Florida fruit had not been shown to be incapable of attaining 8% oil content, since only a small fraction of Florida avocados of certain varieties in fact failed to meet the California test.
Both parties then appealed to the Supreme Court.
Ruling of the Supreme Court.
Majority opinion.
Justice William J. Brennan delivered the 5-4 opinion of the Court, joined by Chief Justice Earl Warren, and Justices John Marshall Harlan II, Potter Stewart, and Arthur J. Goldberg.
Supremacy Clause issues.
The Florida avocado growers' main challenge was under the Supremacy Clause, because some avocados that satisfy the standard set by the AAA marketing order do not satisfy the California 8% oil test.
The Court began by putting aside two issues that it considered beside the point. First, "a federal license or certificate of compliance with minimum federal standards [does not] immunize[] the licensed commerce from inconsistent or more demanding state regulations." (To this, the dissent responded that "Gibbons v. Ogden" is to the contrary.) Second, it is incorrect to claim that "the coexistence of federal and state regulatory legislation should depend upon whether the purposes of the two laws are parallel or divergent." The proper test, the Court said, "is whether both regulations can be enforced without impairing the federal superintendence of the field, not whether they are aimed at similar or different objectives." And preemption should be found only when there are "persuasive reasons—either that the nature of the regulated subject matter permits no other conclusion or that the Congress has unmistakably so ordained."
The Court then outlined the different ways preemption occurs. First, a holding of federal exclusion of state law "is inescapable, and requires no inquiry into congressional design where compliance with both federal and state regulations is a physical impossibility." This would occur, for example, if the federal marketing order forbade the marketing of any avocado testing more than 7% oil, while the California test excluded from the State any avocado measuring less than 8% oil. "As to those Florida avocados of the hybrid and Guatemalan varieties which were actually rejected by the California test, the District Court indicated that the Florida growers might have avoided such rejections by leaving the fruit on the trees beyond the earliest picking date permitted by the federal regulations, and nothing in the record contradicts that suggestion." (The dissent pointed out, however, that doing this would shorten the marketing window for those avocados, contrary to the federal scheme. Therefore, "inevitable collision between the two schemes of regulation" is present.)
Another basis for preemption would be whether "the nature of the subject matter, namely, the maturity of avocados, or any explicit declaration of congressional design to displace state regulation require § 792 to yield to the federal marketing orders." The Court said this is not a subject requiring national uniformity. On the contrary, as a regulation of food, "the maturity of avocados is a subject matter of the kind this Court has traditionally regarded as properly within the scope of state superintendence," because it is regarded as a matter of "peculiarly local concern." The majority distinguished between pre- and post-commerce federal regulation; it said that regulation of standards of the picking, processing, and transportation of agricultural commodities in commerce as properly a field of comprehensive federal regulation, but it should not displace "state control over the distribution and retail sale of those commodities in the interests of the consumers of the commodities within the State." Thus a state such as Florida could not prohibit exportation in commerce of federally certified avocados, but another state such as California may regulate their marketing in that state. At least: "Such a displacement may not be inferred automatically from the fact that Congress has regulated production and packing of commodities for the interstate market." The Court found it immaterial that this was an economic rather than health and safety measure: "neither logic nor precedent invites any distinction between state regulations designed to keep unhealthful or unsafe commodities off the grocer's shelves and those designed to prevent the deception of consumers."
The Court then turned to whether Congress intended that the AAA scheme should displace state law. "The settled mandate governing this inquiry, in deference to the fact that a state regulation of this kind is an exercise of the historic police powers of the States, is not to decree such a federal displacement "unless that was the clear and manifest purpose of Congress." There must be "an unambiguous congressional mandate to that effect," but the Court concluded, "We search in vain for such a mandate." Nothing in the AAA or its legislative history disclosed a "comprehensive congressional design."
Finally the Court expressed skepticism about the truly federal nature of the scheme:
 The regulations show that the Florida avocado maturity standards are drafted each year not by impartial experts in Washington or even in Florida, but rather by the South Florida Avocado Administrative Committee, which consists entirely of representatives of the growers and handlers concerned. It appears that the Secretary of Agriculture has invariably adopted the Committee's recommendations for maturity dates, sizes, and weights. Thus, the pattern which emerges is one of maturity regulations drafted and administered locally by the growers' own representatives, and designed to do no more than promote orderly competition among the South Florida growers.
The Court therefore concluded that Congress did not intend "to oust or displace state powers to enact the regulation embodied in § 792." Rather: "The most plausible inference from the legislative scheme is that the Congress contemplated that state power to enact such regulations should remain unimpaired."
Equal Protection Clause.
The Court affirmed the district court's conclusion that the state standard does not work an irrational discrimination as between persons or groups of persons." While "it may well be" that arguably superior tests of maturity could be devised than the 8% oil test, this possibility does not make the state's choice "either arbitrary or devoid of rational relationship to a legitimate regulatory interest." That is not a question for the courts to decide, and "it is sufficient that, on this record, we should conclude, as we do, that oil content appears to be an acceptable criterion of avocado maturity."
Undue burden on interstate commerce.
The Court insisted that "the present record permits no inference that the California statute had a discriminatory objective." Nor has it been shown that "notwithstanding a legitimate state interest in some form of regulation," § 792 "exceeded the limits necessary to vindicate that interest"; or that §