[dragonwriter]

> His claim is that Washington has written and passed a law that binds Microsoft's operations outside Washington state, which I'm pretty sure would violate the commerce clause.

The commerce clause does not prevent states from having laws which impact interstate commerce unless:

(1) They are preempted by federal exercise of commerce clause powers (though that's really a supremacy clause issue), or

(2) they discriminate against or excessively burden interstate commerce (the dormant commerce clause doctrine).

[CountSessine]

Wouldn't this qualify under the dormant clause if it protected firms in Washington state by making it uneconomical for recruiting firms from elsewhere in the country to enter the Washington labour market? This isn't just about listing wages for positions in Washington state - it would be viral and would contaminate a business's operations everywhere. It would be very cozy for recruiting businesses that operate in Washington state exclusively.

This would kind of be like the Exxon case, but if Maryland had tried to prevent Exxon from having gas stations ANYWHERE in the US if they started doing business in Maryland.

"Enter if you dare, but all your business in the rest of the nation will be affected and you will lose your competitive edge vis-a-vis recruiting firms that stay out of Washington!"

[dragonwriter]

> Wouldn’t this qualify under the dormant clause if it protected firms in Washington state by making it uneconomical for recruiting firms from elsewhere in the country to enter the Washington labour market?

The upthread claim is that it globally binds Washington entities, not that it globally binds foreign entities doing business in Washington. If it did the latter, and the practical impact was as described, it might be considered an undue burden. It might not. Its a lot easier to find cases finding substantial but non-discriminatory burdens on interstate commerce not to be violations of than to find ones holding them in violation of the dormant commerce clause, and this clearly isn't a discriminatory burden in the sense that it would place restrictions on out-of-state actors that are not placed on Washington-based actors.

> This would kind of be like the Exxon case, but if Maryland had tried to prevent Exxon from having gas stations ANYWHERE in the US if they started doing business in Maryland.

I think that’s a wildly invalid analogy, and, in any case, what you want in an analogy to make your case is an analogy to a case where the courts found a dormant commerce clause violation, not a analogy to a hypothetical variant of one where they did not where you conjecture that they might have ruled differently.