Supreme Court won’t weigh Louisiana direct sales ban challenged by Tesla

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The Supreme Court on Monday declined to order a lower court to reconsider its revival of a legal challenge brought by billionaire Elon Musk’s Tesla to a Louisiana law prohibiting car manufacturers from directly selling to consumers.

Louisiana sought another shot at convincing the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that Tesla’s lawsuit should not be allowed to move forward. But the justices declined to intervene in the case.

Tesla in 2022 sued members of the Louisiana Motor Vehicle Commission, composed of dealerships owned by individual commissioners, and the Louisiana Automobile Dealers Association, claiming they were abusing their control of the commission to take aim at Tesla’s sales model and push it from the market.

Tesla sells its vehicles directly to customers via company-owned showrooms and online, as opposed to utilizing traditional dealerships. Nine of the 18 commissioners, on the other hand, are associated with dealerships that Tesla alleges are competitors, which Musk’s company said violates its due process.

In the state’s petition to the justices, Louisiana’s attorney general argued that the 5th Circuit erred in allowing Tesla’s suit to move forward. A district court dismissed Tesla’s complaint but the appeals court revived several claims in a 2-1 decision, including the due process claim.

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