Home whiskey-makers get court win over feds

By David Beasley
The Center Square

A Central Ohio man hoping to continue making whiskey at home may have received good news from a recent court ruling.

The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled recently that the federal ban against home whiskey distilleries is unconstitutional. The Buckeye Institute, a Central Ohio-based think tank, is one of the parties challenging the federal law.

“Raise a glass to freedom!” Robert Alt, president and chief executive officer of the institute and one of the attorneys in the case, said in a statement. “The Fifth Circuit correctly recognized that Congress is indeed a body of limited and enumerated powers, and prohibiting hobby distilling in your own home is not among them.”

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are members of the Hobby Distillers Association, which has pushed for legalizing making whiskey as a hobby in private homes.

It has been illegal under federal law for the last 150 years.

A person convicted of breaking the law could face a maximum prison sentence of five years.

None of the home distillers Fifth Circuit case are from Ohio, although John Ream, a distiller from Newark, Ohio, is a plaintiff in a second case also brought by the Buckeye Institute, the organization’s spokeswoman, Lisa Gates, told The Center Square.

The federal government argued that the law is constitutional because it was enacted to prevent tax evasion and that it would be easier for a distiller working out of their home to conceal the business and therefore avoid paying taxes.

The Fifth Circuit, however, disagreed in its ruling.

“Congress cannot prohibit intrastate activity solely because it might produce products hard to tax.” the court ruled. “Put otherwise, preventing activity lest it give rise to tax evasion places no limit whatsoever on Congress’s power under the taxation clause.”

It is likely the U.S. government will appeal Friday’s Fifth Circuit decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, Andrew Grossman, attorney for the Buckeye Institute, told The Center Square.

“That’s almost always what it does when an appeals court declares a federal law unconstitutional, as the Fifth Circuit did here,” Grossman said. “And the Supreme Court usually agrees to hear those cases. We anticipate that the plaintiffs will be able to distill during any appeal to the Supreme Court.

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