Pork producers knew overturning California’s Proposition 12 wouldn’t be easy, but that doesn’t take the sting out of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision rejecting their case.

Passed by California voters in 2018, Prop 12 bans the sale of uncooked pork — as well as eggs and veal — from animals raised elsewhere if their living conditions don’t meet California’s standards.

The National Pork Producers Council and American Farm Bureau Federation contend Prop 12 violates the U.S. Constitution’s commerce clause and compels out-of-state producers to change their operations to meet California’s standards, impermissibly regulating conduct outside the state’s borders.

They took their case to the U.S. Supreme Court after losing lower court rulings.

“We are disappointed in the court’s ruling and we hoped for a different outcome,” said Bryan Humphreys, NPPC’s CEO.

The ruling comes at a difficult time for the pork industry, as producers face high input costs and the most challenging economic environment in 20 years. The ruling will also place a burden on California consumers, he said during a virtual press conference on Friday.

While the court ruling is the end of the case, pork producers are resilient, he said.

Pork producers have been fighting California’s Prop 12 for four or five years, said Michael Formica, NPPC’s chief legal strategist.

“Perhaps what’s most disappointing is that a majority of the Supreme Court agreed with us that Prop 12 … is causing or will cause significant harm to interstate commerce,” he said.

“Unfortunately, we knew this going in that this was not going to be an easy fight to win,” he said.

That’s mostly because the areas of the Constitution that pork producers had to litigate are in a constant state of flux and part of a highly charged political and legal environment, he said.

While the majority of the court agreed Prop 12 is causing significant harm in the pork industry and having an impact on commerce, they ultimately saw it as a political issue that judges are not equipped to determine, he said.

They weren’t equipped to make a determination of balance between competing interests when one state decides to reach outside its borders and regulate activity in another state, he said.

By a vote of 5-4, the justices upheld two lower court rulings that dismissed the industry’s lawsuit. While judges upheld Prop 12, it was really a 2-2-1-4 vote, he said.

“Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch didn’t think we showed evidence of harm … to interstate commerce. And they didn’t think there was really … any situation where these kinds of cases could even be … litigated and ruled on by judges,” he said.

But Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan disagreed and said there are occasions when the court can rule on this kind of case. But they saw it as more of a competing business decision than harming interstate commerce, he said.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett said Prop 12 poses substantial harm to interstate commerce but unfortunately determined judges weren’t equipped to balance competing moral concerns from one state to another, he said.

In their minority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito and Ketanji Brown Jackson all agreed that what’s happening to the pork industry is indicative of substantial harm to interstate commerce, he said.