No. 21-2614 ___________________________

Paul’s Industrial Garage, Inc., a Wisconsin corporation; Flom Disposal, Inc., a Minnesota corporation

Plaintiffs - Appellants

Countryside Disposal, LLC, a Minnesota corporation

Plaintiff

v. Goodhue County, a Minnesota county; Goodhue County Board of Commissioners, in their official capacities; City of Red Wing, a Minnesota municipality

Defendants - Appellees

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Minnesota Pollution Control Agency

Amicus on Behalf of Appellee(s) ____________

Appeal from United States District Court for the District of Minnesota ____________

Submitted: March 15, 2022 Filed: May 27, 2022 ____________ Before GRASZ, STRAS, and KOBES, Circuit Judges. ____________ KOBES, Circuit Judge.

Proverbially, “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” For Paul’s Industrial Garage (PIG), a Wisconsin-based trash hauler, that idiom applies literally. PIG made around $200,000 per year collecting trash in Goodhue County, Minnesota. That ended when the County passed an ordinance requiring all garbage to be deposited at a state-owned plant in Red Wing, Minnesota (the City Plant). The garbage is then processed into refuse-derived fuel and sold to Northern States Power Company (Xcel) to be burned for electricity.

PIG and other garbage haulers and processors sued the County and Red Wing, arguing that the Ordinance violated the Commerce Clause by benefitting an in-state company (Xcel) at the expense of out-of-state haulers and processors. The district court1 granted summary judgment to the defendants. Because PIG’s claim doesn’t implicate the Commerce Clause, we affirm.

I.

Before passing the disputed Ordinance, the County used private haulers and waste processing facilities, including PIG, to dispose of its garbage. PIG profited in two ways from this arrangement: (1) by charging customers to remove their waste, and (2) by charging other trash haulers a “tipping fee” to use PIG’s landfill in Hager City, Wisconsin. “Tipping fees are disposal charges levied against collectors who drop off waste at a processing facility. They are called ‘tipping’ fees because garbage trucks literally tip their back end to dump out the carried waste.” United Haulers Ass’n, Inc. v. Oneida-Herkimer Solid Waste Mgmt. Auth., 550 U.S. 330, 336 n.1 (2007). Between the tipping and collection fees, PIG made roughly $200,000 per year from the County, accounting for about 30% of its revenue.

1 The Honorable David S. Doty, United States District Judge for the District of Minnesota. -2- In 2017 the County enacted the Ordinance, which requires haulers collecting garbage in Goodhue County to deposit it at the government-owned City Plant. The City Plant would then convert that garbage into refuse-derived fuel and sell it to Xcel. 2 PIG and other garbage haulers and processors sued, arguing that the Ordinance violates the dormant Commerce Clause in two ways. First, they argued that requiring all garbage to go to the City Plant to be converted into refuse-derived fuel unfairly discriminates against out-of-state competitors. They also claimed that even if the County is free to require all garbage to go to a state-owned plant, the County violated the dormant Commerce Clause by exclusively selling a byproduct of that garbage to a private, in-state company.

Th