On December 11, the state of Indiana, joined by twelve other agricultural states, filed a complaint against Massachusetts in the Supreme Court over Question 3. The case brought by Indiana overlapped with that brought by Missouri against California. The plaintiff states argued that Massachusetts's law violated the dormant Commerce Clause, which forbids states from discriminating against or unduly burdening interstate commerce, while Attorney General Healey responded that the plaintiffs' arguments had been tested and rejected by "centuries of precedent". On April 16, 2018, the Supreme Court asked the Solicitor General, at the time Noel Francisco, to give an opinion on whether it should hear both cases. Francisco's office responded on November 29, 2018. Its filing emphasized that the plaintiff states had still failed to show proper standing, in part because the impact of Question 3 on out-of-state food prices had not been determined, but also discussed the Commerce Clause issue. State laws may violate the dormant Commerce Clause if they explicitly provide different treatment for identical situations found inside or outside the state. The Solicitor General argued that, as the Ninth Circuit noted in its dismissal of "Missouri v. Harris", regulations like California's and Massachusetts's treat in- and out-of-state suppliers equally, and are therefore not economically discriminatory in this sense. Under a test established in "Pike v. Bruce Church, Inc.", if a state statute is not explicitly discriminatory but does affect interstate commerce, the court balances the local interest served by the law against the burden it places on interstate commerce. The Solicitor General opined that a district court, not the Supreme Court, would be the appropriate place to weigh this balance. On January 7, 2019, the Supreme Court declined to hear both the California and Massachusetts cases, without explanation and with Justice Clarence Thomas disagreeing. In May 2019, the Massachusetts House approved an amendment to the state budget that would have relaxed Question 3's space requirement, allowing farmers with chickens in cage-free buildings to provide only 1 square foot of space per chicken instead of 1.5, if they also provided additional “enrichments”, such as perches or multi-tiered platforms, meant to allow chickens to engage in more natural behaviors. This amendment was supported by the New England Brown Egg Council as well as by , which said it represented an improvement to the 2016 law; it was patterned after similar compromises worked out in other states. However, the move drew criticism from other animal protection groups as well as from from the Massachusetts Farm Bureau, which had opposed the original ballot initiative but said its members had already invested in new buildings compliant with the 2016 version of the law.