USDA’s Raisin Brand
June 11 | Posted by mrossol | Big Govt, SocialismReally?
========
If the government confiscates your property without compensation, that’s a violation of the Constitution’s Takings Clause. If it confiscates your property as part of a longstanding government program, that’s business as usual at the Department of Agriculture. Or at least it was until Monday, when a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that raisin farmers can challenge federal regulations in court before they are forced to pay fines for noncompliance.
In Horne v. USDA, the question involved a Great Depression program to prop up the price of raisins by forcing raisin sellers to hand over a share of their crop at a discount to the federal government. Through annual marketing orders, the Raisin Administrative Committee controls the U.S. raisin supply.
When raisin farmers Marvin and Laura Horne tried to avoid the confiscation by cutting out the middleman sellers, the USDA came after them with hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. The Hornes appealed on grounds that taking the raisins at below-market rates was an unconstitutional seizure of their property.
A federal district court upheld the government’s right to take the raisins, saying the Hornes were merely paying a “toll” for marketing their raisins and that the government doesn’t “force plaintiffs to grow raisins or to market the raisins.” [But the Govt can make you buy health insurance?…] A panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed.
But when the case was appealed to the Ninth Circuit en banc, the government switched its argument at the 11th hour, claiming that the Hornes had to first pay their fines and only then appeal the case in the Court of Federal Claims. The effect would have been to let the government bully businesses to comply with the regulations to avoid the potential fines or years of litigation.
In his opinion for the Court, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the Ninth Circuit could decide the takings claim directly. He added that it makes no sense to “force a party to pay an assessed fine in one proceeding and then turn around and sue for recovery of that same money in another proceeding.”
The Hornes must still fight the takings case on the merits back in the Ninth Circuit, but at least they can’t be subjected to this form of double jeopardy.
A version of this article appeared June 11, 2013, on page A16 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Government’s Raisin Brand.
Review & Outlook: The Government’s Raisin Brand – WSJ.com.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.