Every day, millions of American adults enjoy drinks made with whiskey, gin, rum and other spirits. But while the drinks are perfectly legal, anyone who dares to distill their own spirits at home is committing a federal felony punishable by up to five years in prison—all because home-based distilleries are harder for the government to tax and regulate. That’s an alarming assertion of federal power that threatens the privacy, autonomy, and economic liberty of every American, and that’s why the Goldwater Institute has filed a brief in the U.S. Supreme Court urging the justices to end this government overreach.
The case, Ream v. Department of the Treasury, involves an Ohio hobbyist who would like to take up home distilling but is blocked by a 19th-century ban on the practice. Goldwater’s
petition asks the Court to review the federal ban under both the taxing power and the Interstate Commerce Clause and to establish a solid, uniform standard in favor of principled federalism—one that recognizes that there must be a definitive end point to the government’s implied federal powers.
The central issue in Ream exposes a radical theory of unlimited federal authority. Congress’s authority is tied to the Constitution’s list of express, enumerated powers. The federal government can only reach beyond that limited scope when doing so is necessary and proper for exercising one or more of those core powers listed in the Constitution. Under the Department of Treasury’s logic in Ream, however, the federal government can ban any private home activity if that activity might reduce commercial sales or complicate tax enforcement. The federal excise tax applies to all spirits the moment they are made, even if they are used for personal consumption and never sold. In this case, the government claims it can ban home-based distilleries because they’re harder to monitor for the purposes of tax collection and because allowing people to craft spirits at home could lead to fewer commercial purchases.
Under that theory, if Congress institutes a tax on cookies or bread, it could also outlaw at-home baking under the pretext that commercial factories are easier for inspectors to supervise. In a free society, constitutional barriers protect private homes from pervasive federal surveillance. Instead, the government treats administrative convenience as a blank check to criminalize peaceful household production.
When the federal government’s authority is stretched to police what Americans make in their own kitchens, garages, and workshops, it ceases to operate within constitutional limits and assumes a general police power the Constitution expressly denies it.
The importance of this case is underscored by a glaring, direct conflict among federal appellate courts. While the Sixth Circuit created a dangerous precedent by rubber-stamping the home-distilling prohibition under the government’s taxing power, the Fifth Circuit struck down the exact same statutory ban, holding that the Necessary and Proper Clause does not grant Congress a general police power over the home. The Supreme Court urgently needs to intervene here to establish clear constitutional boundaries on federal power.
This constitutional defense reflects Goldwater’s broader commitment to defending home-based enterprise and economic liberty nationwide. Through our model Home-Based Business Fairness Act—enacted in states including Texas, Missouri, Iowa, West Virginia, and North Carolina—and our work defending cottage-food entrepreneurs, Goldwater continues to demonstrate that local matters belong at the local level. After all, states and local governments, not distant federal bureaucracies, are best equipped to balance health and safety while safeguarding the right of citizens to pursue productive livelihoods at home.
As the Supreme Court considers the petition in Ream, the stakes could not be higher for constitutional federalism. The Goldwater Institute will continue to stand at the vanguard of the fight to keep the federal government out of the American home.
Read the Goldwater Institute’s amicus brief here.
Tony Napolitano is a Senior Attorney at the Goldwater Institute.
