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. . . consideration and the constitutional command that the State exercise that power, like its other powers, so as not to discriminate without reason against citizens of other States. Id. at 402, quoted in Hughes, 441 U.S. 332. The Hughes Court remarked that "[a]lthough stated in reference to the Privileges and Immunities Clause challenge, this reasoning is equally applicable to the Commerce Clause challenge." Id. Hughes sealed its argument on such "ownership" with the following passage drawn from Douglas v. Seacoast Products, Inc.: A State does not stand in the same position as the owner of a private game preserve and it is pure fantasy to talk of "owning" wild fish, birds, or animals. Neither the States nor the Federal Government, any more than a hopeful fisherman or hunter, has title to these creatures until they are reduced to possession by skillful capture. . . . Geer v. Connecticut, 161 U.S. 519, 539-40 (1896) (Field, J., dissenting). The "ownership" language of cases such as those cited by appellant must be understood as no more than a 19th-century legal fiction expressing "the importance to its people that a State have power to preserve and regulate the exploitation of an important resource." Toomer v. Wits ell, 334 U.S., at 402 . . . Under modern analysis, the question is simply whether the State has exercised its police power in conformity with the federal laws and Constitution. Douglas v. Seacoast Products, Inc., 431 U.S. 265, 284-85 (1977), quoted in Hughes, 441 U.S. at 334-35. Nebraska insisted its water was distinguishable from the cases just discussed because, while Connecticut allowed an intrastate market in game birds and Oklahoma did the same as regards minnows, Nebraska had no water market. Sporhase, 458 U.S., at 951. This same distinction also applied to Nebraska's circumstances and those in City of Altus v. Carr, 255 F.Supp. 828 (W.D. Tex. 1966), summarily affd, 385 U.S. 35 (1966), where a Texas statute prohibiting the export of ground water was struck down. Sporhase, 458 U.S., at 951. The Sporhase Court conceded that the distinction "may not be irrelevant to Commerce Clause analysis," but asserted that it "does not absolutely remove Nebraska ground water from such scrutiny," because Nebraska's argument "is still based on the legal fiction of state ownership." Id. To the Sporhase Court, this fiction was "illustrated" by the fact that Nebraska permitted "municipal water supply arrangements pursuant to which ground water is withdrawn from rural areas and transferred to urban areas." ld. Nebraska considered such arrangements immaterial because there was no charge for the water itself, but only for the cost of moving it. Id. at 951-52. Nonetheless, the Court surmised that the same must be true of Hughes' minnows, the purchasers of which paid only for their seining and transportation. Id. at 952. Thus, there was no significant difference between the minnows of Hughes and the groundwater of Sporhase. See id. State ownership of groundwater was, in the end, as much a legal fiction as state ownership of wildlife. 7