Fort Gratiot Sanitary Landfill, Inc. v. Michigan Department of Natural Resources’s Empirical Analysis
1992
Citation profile
119 federal appellate · 38 district · 57 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 382 later decisions (18 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2025 · most notably New York v. United States (1992), Oregon Waste Systems, Inc. v. Department of Environmental Quality of Ore. (1994)
119 federal appellate · 38 district · 57 state decisions — followed in 18 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Appellate journey
reviewedBill Kettlewell Excavating, Inc. v. Michigan Department of Natural Resources (from Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Pike v. Bruce Church, Inc. · City of Philadelphia v. New Jersey · Toomer v. Witsell · Maine v. Taylor · H. P. Hood & Sons, Inc. v. Du Mond
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 382 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[O]ur prior cases teach that a State may not avoid the strictures of the Commerce Clause by curtailing the movement of articles of commerce through subdivisions of the State, rather than through the State itself.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““to justify [the statute] both in terms of the local benefits flowing from the statute and the unavailability of nondiscriminatory alternatives adequate to preserve the local interests at stake.” ... The burden is on the State to show that “the discrimination is demonstrably justified by a valid factor unrelated to economic protectionism ...””
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[t]he 'negative' or 'dormant' aspect of the Commerce Clause prohibits States from advancing their own commercial interests by curtailing the movement of articles of commerce, either into or out of the state.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.