7 U.S.C. § 208
Section 208 · Unreasonable or discriminatory practices generally; rights of stockyard owner of management and regulation
Amended 2 times on record
Applied in 27 court decisions — leading case Butz v. Glover Livestock Commission Co. (1973)
Most recently applied in 864 F. Supp. 2d 826 - Wallace v. Mathias (May 2012)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year.Markers show enactment, consequential amendments, and circuit splits over this section — watch for a citation surge after a change or a disagreement. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
(a) It shall be the duty of every stockyard owner and market agency to establish, observe, and enforce just, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory regulations and practices in respect to the furnishing of stockyard services, and every unjust, unreasonable, or discriminatory regulation or practice is prohibited and declared to be unlawful.
(b) It shall be the responsibility and right of every stockyard owner to manage and regulate his stockyard in a just, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory manner, to prescribe rules and regulations and to require those persons engaging in or attempting to engage in the purchase, sale, or solicitation of livestock at such stockyard to conduct their operations in a manner which will foster, preserve, or insure an efficient, competitive public market. Such rules and regulations shall not prevent a registered market agency or dealer from rendering service on other markets or in occasional and incidental off-market transactions.
Editorial notes U.S. Code · Office of the Law Revision Counsel
Amendments
1968—Pub. L. 90–446 designated existing provisions as subsec. (a) and added subsec. (b).