Posted on 10/19/2026 11:46:52 AM PDT by Red Badger
The Supreme Court has agreed to weigh in on the constitutionality of an 1868 federal law that imposes a tax on distilled spirits but also bans home distilleries – that is, the at-home production of spirits like bourbon and whiskey. The penalties for violating the law include fines of up to $10,000, five years in prison, or both. In a list of orders from the justices’ Oct. 16 conference, the court announced that it had granted review in Department of Justice v. McNutt.
The justices will likely hear oral argument in the case early next year, with a decision to follow by late June or early July.
The lawsuit was filed in 2023 by a nonprofit, the Hobby Distillers Association, and some of its individual members, who want to be able to operate home distilleries. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled that the ban on home distilleries violates two different provisions of the Constitution: the taxation clause, which gives Congress the power to “lay and collect Taxes … to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States”; and the necessary and proper clause, which gives Congress the power to “make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution” its listed powers.
The Constitution gives Congress the power to impose a tax on distilled spirits, the 5th Circuit determined, but it concluded that the ban on home distilleries exceeds that power. Not only does the ban not raise revenue, the court of appeals wrote, it prevents the production of spirits that could generate revenue. The court of appeals similarly rejected the government’s contention that the ban guards against tax evasion, explaining that “preventing activity lest it give rise to tax evasion places no limit whatsoever on Congress’s power under the taxation clause.”
The federal government came to the Supreme Court in August, asking the justices to weigh in. It contended that “[a] law is necessary and proper if it is ‘convenient’ or ‘useful’ for carrying an enumerated power into effect, and ‘plainly adapted’ to that legitimate end.” That is precisely what the ban on home distilleries does, the government argued. “Congress restricted home distilling because a distiller can more easily conceal a distilling operation or thwart necessary inspections—thereby evading the requisite tax—if the still is located in” a house or a structure attached to that house.
The challengers agreed that the court should grant review, although they urged the justices to leave the 5th Circuit’s ruling in place. The case, they said, “presents fundamental questions of the extent of federal power and the powers reserved to the states and the people.”
In a separate case, Ream v. Department of the Treasury, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit reached the opposite conclusion from the 5th Circuit, holding that the ban on home distilleries is a necessary and proper exercise of Congress’s power to collect the federal tax on distilled spirits. John Ream, a retired aerospace engineer and the owner of a brewery who wants to be able to distill his own spirits, then came to the Supreme Court in July, asking the justices to weigh in on the legality of the ban and on the broader question of Congress’ power to regulate “local, noncommercial conduct.”
The federal government agreed that the justices should take up the question at the center of Ream’s petition for review, but it urged the court to grant its own petition, in McNutt, instead. On Monday, the justices did just that.
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When it says bans home distilleries, I believe they mean people making booze at home and selling it...in other words....they did not ban “in home use”.
Good luck with that.....get the broads out of any office in which they can perpetuate another disaster.....go make me a sandwich and shut up.
Photo....
Catherine Bach said after the series ended.
“I was constantly on a strict diet. Everyone could see if I ever gained a pound I had no place to put it.”
A gallon of fresh, 120 proof whiskey for $25.
That’s all it’s worth.
Photo....
Great old song Copper Kettle.
Get you a copper kettle, get you a copper coil
Fill it with new made corn mash and never more you’ll toil
You’ll just lay there by the juniper while the moon is bright
Watch them jugs a-filling in the pale moonlight.
Build you a fire with hickory, hickory, ash and oak
Don’t use no green or rotten wood, they’ll get you by the smoke.
You’ll just lay there by the juniper while the moon is bright
Watch them jugs a-filling in the pale moonlight.
My daddy he made whiskey, my granddaddy he did too
We ain’t paid no whiskey tax since 1792
You’ll just lay there by the juniper while the moon is bright
Watch them jugs a-filling in the pale moonlight.
Version by Bob Dylan on Self-Portrait.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhavzsdylbM
Free the Shine!!
The distilling ban was just a Fed Cash Grab, nothing more.
That was the first thing I also thought when I read this thread. It would be really great if lifting the ban on home distilleries also overturns Wickard v. Filburn.
For other FReepers, Wickard was the old SCOTUS case that neutered the Constitution's commerce clause, thus allowing the federal govt to punish a farmer for growing more wheat than he was allowed to (Agricultural Adjustment Act) even though it was used for his own livestock and not for interstate commerce. Basically if the government can tell a farmer how much grain he can grow to feed his own livestock, all in the name of "interstate commerce", then the govt has the authority to regulate anything by calling it "interstate commerce".
I know home wine making has a few restrictions. If I recall correctly, a limit of 300 gallons per adult household member and cannot be sold. I have no issue with personal use and gifts.
I know home wine making has a few restrictions. If I recall correctly, a limit of 300 gallons per adult household member and cannot be sold. I have no issue with personal use and gifts.
You can make your own beer also...................
No fed law explicitly restricts where distilling above a certain percentage may occur and bans it at home. The government position is that allowing home distillery would make it much harder to catch people selling untaxed spirits. The 5th circuit says that logic would allow the government to ban the home making of anything they wish to tax and is thus overreach. The 6th circuit basically says the feds have always taxed alcohol and prior to the home bans tax evasion was rampant thus it is not overreach to ban this specific activity.
Some guy on YouTube who does medical videos claim the ban is in place to protect people from drinking methanol-contaminated liquor. I don’t think that’s the real reason at all, as it’s really about Uncle Sam wanting their share of the financial windfall.
The 1868 federal law (enacted during Reconstruction as part of an act imposing taxes on distilled spirits and tobacco) prohibited the at-home production of spirits like whiskey and bourbon by banning stills in residential dwellings or on the same property. At that time there was no OSHA or FSIS. But there was a department of agriculture. However, modern food safety regulations began in 1906 with the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Federal Meat Inspection Act in the United States.
Moonshine and liquor produced in hidden, unregulated stills frequently became contaminated with toxic metals, lead, and chemical impurities during manufacturing, though comprehensive, cumulative national tracking figures for modern or historical craft-still poisonings aren’t complete.
But a lot of groups and people are taking the easy way out saying that during the prohibition times the government was forcing people to use hidden stills by limiting the consumption of alcohol. Just like your friend jumping off a cliff...do you join him?
The courts this year has agree to look at the case of Department of Justice v. McNutt concerning the use of stills but it only coners the right of congress to tax. It has nothing to do with the restrictions placed on the distillers of major companies and allows the home distiller a very wide leeway in the safe production of their product.
I had a room mate for a while in college that worked at a major refinery and would bring 5 gallon containers of ethyl alcohol to the room in the dorm from work and mix it with fruit juice or other liquids as a drink. He got it for free so he was in a continual state of blasted most of the time. After years of consumption prior to going to college and continuing the practice he ended up with a heart problem we now call alcoholic cardiomyopathy. I haven’t seen or heard about him in over 50 years. He’s probably dead with all the health problems he had started in the early 1970’s.
I find very little about the danger of home distilation but a lot of opinion on the legality of taxing it. Serious problems can be metabolic acidosis, neurological dysfunction, permanent blindness (by damaging the optic nerve), organ failure, chronic renal (kidney) failure, severe abdominal pain (”painter’s colic”), peripheral neuropathy, and neurological damage, gastrointestinal distress, acute renal failure, hemolytic anemia, and neurological disturbances, alcoholic liver disease (cirrhosis), alcoholic cardiomyopathy (heart failure), acute or chronic pancreatitis, gastritis, hypertension, and an increased risk of cancers of the mouth, throat, and liver, and last but nit least, death. And I didn’t even get into the deaths on the highways each year from public intoxication.
wy69
It’s one of the first steps before banning all alcohol.
Muslims, you know.
Try looking at a lot of new stories with that view.
It’s everywhere.
“Wickard v. Filburn.”
is wicked fascist gov’t over-reach.
It needs to be overturned.
If it becomes legal then there will be an explosion of great tasting booze becoming available, already some of us have sampled some very nice home booze.
SCOTUS got away with it because it was 1942, which is yet another example of how measures that should have gotten only temporary Constitutional forbearance during wartime were made into permanent accruals of gov power.
Copper and lead solder were used for centuries, so I'm not sure how you can get too much lead or other metals unless you're using lead tubing or strange alloy containers somewhere.
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