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Interesting. He was growing wheat to feed animals. The court decided that him withdrawing from the interstate wheat market was equivalent to him participating i
by erikpukinskis 7y ago
Interesting. He was growing wheat to feed animals. The court decided that him withdrawing from the interstate wheat market was equivalent to him participating in the interstate wheat market. Because in both cases you are affecting the interstate market.
Doesn’t make much sense to me.
If they had said, he’s selling the animals made from wheat across state lines, so the production is regulable, that would at least give me an idea of what kinds of activity are not regulable.
But as it stands, it seems like as long as there is one supply chain that crosses state lines, anyone engaging in any of the same activities are subject to federal oversight. Even if they are operating distinctly from that supply chain, and distributing only within state lines.
Seems impossibly broad to me.
But maybe I’m misunderstanding and it was selling the animals across state lines that triggered the federal jurisdiction.
- dantheman 7y agoYou're not misunderstanding it - it was a giant power grab, and the federal government can say anything that affects interstate commerce is within their purview.
- joeblow9999 7y agoits a cornerstone of the deug war
- LocalH 7y agoThe point was to give the federal government nearly unlimited power. Seems to have worked so far, too. :(
- gamblor956 7y agoYou're misunderstanding it. The part everyone leaves out when they complain about this case is that he was also growing wheat to sell across state lines. The wheat he was feeding to his animals was in addition to that wheat, and the combination of the two amounts put him over the wheat restrictions. (Note: there is some argument over whether the farmer sold any wheat inter-state in the particular year at issue. That is irrelevant, since he definitely participated in interstate commerce with the same farm in prior and following years, so the activity itself was treated as an interstate commercial activity. If he had always just stuck to just growing his own wheat for private (non-commercial) use, the wheat controls would not have applied. There is an entire string of SCOTUS cases limiting future cases on precisely those grounds--that purely intra-state commercial activities doesn't give rise to federal jurisdiction of the Commerce Clause. The key is that the contemplated commercial activity must (a) be primarily local in nature and (b) not actually cross state lines.
- erikpukinskis 7y agoThank you! I thought I must be missing something.