In the case of National Mines Corp. v. Caryl, Tax Commissioner of West Virginia (1989), the U.S Supreme Court ruled in favor of West Virginia's tax commissioner, upholding a state law that imposed a severance tax on coal mined within its borders but exempted from taxation any coal consumed for manufacturing purposes within the state. The National Mines Corporation had challenged this law as discriminatory against interstate commerce and therefore unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause. However, the court held that although it did discriminate between in-state and out-of-state consumers by taxing only those who exported their product outside West Virginia, it was not necessarily unconstitutional because there was no evidence to suggest that such discrimination affected interstate commerce negatively or gave an unfair advantage to local businesses over their out-of-state competitors.

In the dissenting opinion for National Mines Corp. v. Caryl, Justice Scalia disagreed with the majority's ruling that West Virginia's tax on coal mined within its borders was unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause of the U.S Constitution. He argued that this decision contradicted previous rulings where similar taxes were upheld and did not believe there was sufficient evidence to suggest this tax would harm interstate commerce or favor local businesses unfairly. Furthermore, he noted that states have a right to impose taxes on natural resources extracted from their land as part of their sovereign authority and such taxation should not be seen as discriminatory against out-of-state entities but rather an exercise of state power over its own resources.