The Supreme Court said Monday it will weigh the constitutionality of a nearly 160-year-old federal ban on distilling liquor at home.
CBS News reported the case as Department of Justice v. McNutt. The Hobby Distillers Association and one of its members, McNutt, want to make spirits at home. Federal law forbids it.
A federal district court already found the ban unconstitutional. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld most of that ruling. Now the justices will decide whether Congress overstepped its power when it criminalized stills inside private dwellings.
The stakes reach beyond hobbyists. The statute allows fines, up to five years in prison, and forfeiture of the home and property inside it. No exception exists for personal or family use.
Federal law states a person may not produce distilled spirits at home for personal use. Anyone who uses or possesses stills or related equipment in any dwelling house, shed, yard, or enclosure faces criminal penalties.
Congress enacted the restriction in 1868. Lawmakers acted after a House report the prior year documented widespread tax evasion in the spirits trade.
That 1867 report found the tax rate stood at $2 per gallon, more than the market price of the spirits themselves. Commercial distillers often found it cheaper to bribe revenue officers than to pay. Lawmakers determined that at least seven-eights of spirits went untaxed at the time.
The new legislation cut the tax rate and required duties to be paid before spirits left warehouses. It also closed off home production. For more than a century, Congress has limited where distilling may occur in order to prevent tax evasion.
McNutt and the Hobby Distillers Association argued the prohibition exceeds Congress’s enumerated powers, including its taxing power. A federal district court sided with them.
The district court reasoned that the location limits criminalize conduct of persons not subject to the tax and do not touch the product to be taxed.
The 5th Circuit largely agreed. It held that limits on home distilling are not plainly adapted to support the government’s taxing power.
The appeals court went further on the constitutional danger. It warned that upholding the ban would let Congress criminalize nearly any at-home conduct only because it has the possibility of concealing taxable activity.
"Upholding the ban would let Congress criminalize nearly any at-home conduct only because it has the possibility of concealing taxable activity."
Solicitor General D. John Sauer urged the Supreme Court to take the case. He called the lower court decision erroneous.
In the government’s appeal, Sauer explained Congress’s original purpose. He wrote that 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 dwelling-house or connected structure.
The Department of Justice frames the ban as a practical tool for collecting taxes, not a free-floating morals rule. Sauer’s filing treats home location as the feature that makes enforcement collapse.
Lawyers for the would-be distillers welcomed high court review even as they opposed the government’s position. They argue the theory behind the ban has no natural stopping point.
Their filing states there is no limit to the government’s claim of power to criminalize local conduct that might conceal taxable activity.
"There is no limit to the government’s claim of power to criminalize local conduct that might conceal taxable activity."
That claim sits at the center of the case. If Congress may ban stills inside a house solely because inspection is harder there, the same logic could reach other ordinary household activity that might hide taxable goods or income.
The Supreme Court announced the grant on Monday from Washington. Arguments are expected next year. A decision is expected by late June or early July.
The Court will need to determine whether the 1868 location restriction is a valid exercise of the taxing power or an impermissible criminalization of private conduct that the tax itself does not reach.
Investigators and revenue officers have long treated dwelling-based stills as high-risk sites for concealment. The plaintiffs counter that the Constitution still requires a tighter link between the prohibited act and the tax on the product.
No public results have been released about any pending enforcement actions against the named plaintiffs. The litigation so far has tested the facial validity of the ban rather than a specific seizure or indictment detailed in the available record.
The dispute forces a concrete question: how far may Congress go inside a private home when the stated goal is tax collection? The statute does not merely tax spirits. It makes production in listed residential spaces a crime and exposes the house itself to forfeiture.
Supporters of the ban point to the post-Civil War record of commercial fraud and the practical difficulty of inspecting stills hidden in dwellings. Opponents say the district court and the 5th Circuit correctly refused to treat every hard-to-inspect private act as fair game for federal criminal law.
Congress wrote the rule with no carve-out for personal use. That choice keeps the constitutional issue clean. Either the location ban fits within enumerated power, or it does not.
When the justices hear the case next year, they will decide whether a Civil War-era enforcement tool still clears the Constitution’s limits on federal power over ordinary life at home.
Limited government means little if Congress can turn any private act into a felony whenever tax collection might become harder to watch.
