Supreme Court agrees to review 160-year-old federal ban on home distillation of spirits
The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to take up a challenge to a federal law enacted in 1868 that prohibits Americans from distilling spirits at home. The case arose after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the ban violated the Constitution's necessary and proper clause, while the 6th Circuit upheld it, creating a circuit split. Penalties for violating the ban include criminal fines, up to five years in prison, and forfeiture of a violator's home.
Two sources · Thin corroboration
The Supreme Court will decide whether a federal law banning home distillation of spirits — on the books since 1868 — can survive constitutional scrutiny. The justices granted the Trump administration's appeal of a 5th Circuit decision that struck the law down, and separately held a parallel challenge brought by Ohio engineer John Ream, whose case followed a 6th Circuit ruling upholding the ban.
The 1868 law, originally enacted to help fund Civil War debts through federal excise taxes on spirits, bars distilling in any "dwelling house," shed, or yard. The Justice Department, in court filings, argued the prohibition flows from Congress's necessary and proper clause authority, because home stills are easier to conceal from inspectors and harder to tax. The government collected $6 billion in revenue from spirits taxes in 2024, according to CNN.
Challengers contest the government's framing of the law's origins. Ream's lawyers, at The Buckeye Institute, told the court that the major tax-evasion problem in the 1860s was commercial distributors bribing revenue agents — not home distillers — and argued the home ban was a political concession to the temperance movement rather than a tax-enforcement measure. They also warned of a broader implication: if Congress can ban home distilling by citing tax evasion as justification, it could potentially ban home baking, sewing, or remote work on the same theory.