Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
A federal appeals court on April 10 declared a nearly 158-year-old ban on home distilling to be unconstitutional, ruling that the ban was an unnecessary and improper means for Congress to exercise its power to tax.
Writing for a three-judge panel in McNutt v. U.S. Department of Justice, Judge Edith Hollan Jones of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit found that the ban actually reduced tax revenue by preventing distilling in the first place, the opposite of its stated intent.
The court ruled in favor of the nonprofit Hobby Distillers Association and four of its 1,300 members, who argued that people should be free to distill spirits at home, whether as a hobby or for personal consumption—including, for instance, to create an apple pie vodka recipe one of the plaintiffs created.
The ban was part of a law passed during Reconstruction in July 1868. It imposed excise taxes on distilled spirits but also made it illegal for a person to use “any still, boiler, or other vessel for purpose of distilling” when the still was located, among other places, “in any dwelling-house” or “in any shed, yard, or enclosure connected with any dwelling-house.”
The case began in December 2023 when the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank, filed suit on behalf of the Hobby Distillers Association and four individuals against the Treasury Department’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau and the Department of Justice.
The hobby group argued that the government’s regulatory reach could not extend to activities within a person’s home.
The face of the case was Scott McNutt, a New Jersey resident and former U.S. Coast Guard engineer.
McNutt received an unsolicited letter from the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau warning him of potential civil and criminal liability after the agency learned that he may have purchased materials that could be used to distill spirits.
Under federal law, distilling in one’s home or backyard could result in a $10,000 fine and five years in prison. By contrast, home brewing of beer for personal use has been federally legal since 1978.
In July 2024, Judge Mark T. Pittman of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas sided with the plaintiffs, issuing a permanent injunction and declaring the relevant provisions of the Internal Revenue Code unconstitutional.
Competitive Enterprise Institute attorney Dan Greenberg called it “a victory for personal freedoms and for federalism,” adding in a statement at the time that the decision “reminds us that, as Americans, we live under a government of limited powers.”
The government appealed in August 2024.
The Buckeye Institute in Ohio pursued a similar challenge on behalf of John Ream, a former Boeing engineer and home-brewing hobbyist who wanted to try distilling small quantities of alcohol at home for his own personal consumption.
Buckeye attorney Andrew Grossman warned that under the government’s broad theory of federal power, “Congress could regulate or even ban the most mundane domestic activities—including home cooking, baking, gardening, and occasionally babysitting neighbor kids.”
West Virginia has already passed a law allowing households of two or more people to produce up to 10 gallons of spirits a year for personal consumption, independent of the federal ban. Most other states maintain their own restrictions.