Seventh Circuit Upholds Chicago's Puppy-Mill Ban

Steven D. Schwinn, John Marshall Law School

The Seventh Circuit upheld Chicago's "puppy mill" ordinance, which limits the sources from which city-licensed pet stores may obtain certain pets for resale, against a challenge under the Illinois Constitution's home-rule provision and the federal dormant Commerce Clause. The ruling leaves the ordinance in place.

Chicago's ordinance says that pet retailers in the city "may offer for sale only those dogs, cats, or rabbits" obtained from an animal control or care center, pound, or kennel operated by local, state, or federal government or "a humane society or rescue organization." The ordinance means that pet stores can't get their animals from large, mill-style breeders. Chicago adopted the law in order to protect against the "economic and emotional burdens for pet owners and [the] financial costs on the City as owners abandon their physically or emotionally challenged pets or surrender them to the [city shelter]."

Two Chicago pet stores and a Missouri dog breeder sued, arguing that the ordinance exceeded Chicago's authority under the Illinois Constitution's home-rule provision and violated the federal dormant Commerce Clause.

The Seventh Circuit disagreed. As to the home-rule argument, the court said that the Illinois Constitution permits Chicago to regulate in an area, concurrently with the state, so long as the General Assembly doesn't "specifically limit" it or "specifically declare the State's exercise to be exclusive." Because state law doesn't restrict, but actually preserves, municipal power to regulate animal care and welfare, the court said that Chicago's ordinance doesn't exceed its home-rule authority.

As to the dormant Commerce Clause, the court said that it didn't even apply, because Chicago's ordinance doesn't discriminate against interstate commerce. The court ruled that circuit law said that a state or local law that doesn't discriminate on its face or in effect doesn't even implicate the dormant Commerce Clause. "No disparate treatment, no disparate impact, no problem under the dormant commerce clause." The court therefore declined to apply Pike balancing, and ruled that the ordinance easily satisfied the default rationality review.

Judge Hamilton dissented in part, arguing that the court should have applied Pike balancing, because Dep't of Revenue of Kentucky v. Davis and United Haulers Ass'n v. Oneida-Herkimer Solid Waste clarified that "even nondiscriminatory burdens on commerce" are subject to Pike balancing and "may be struck down on a showing that those burdens clearly outweigh the benefits of a state or local practice." Judge Hamilton also argued that the majority applied an overly rigid pleading standard by not crediting the plaintiffs' allegations in the complaint that Chicago's ordinance would disparately impact out-of-staters.