Camara de Mercadeo v. Vazquez

Appellants in this case were three shipping operators who pay a fee to Puerto Rico to conduct business out of the Port of San Juan. The Commonwealth supplied each company with cargo-scanning technology, required them to scan all of their inbound cargo at the port, and then, to pay for the scanning, charged each an additional fee on top of the existing fees that it already charged operators to utilize the port. A magistrate judge concluded that the additional fee was constitutional as applied to the three shipping operators equipped with the scanning technology and did not violate the dormant Commerce Clause. The First Circuit affirmed, holding that the three shipping operators failed to prove that the additional fee, as applied to them, violates the dormant Commerce Clause. View "Camara de Mercadeo v. Vazquez" on Justia Law