California Raisins Beat Feds at U.S. Supreme Court

You may have heard it through the grapevine: the California raisin farmer who challenged the federal government’s power to seize a substantial portion of each year’s crop as part of a New Deal price-floor scheme had a very strong case under the Fifth Amendment’s takings clause. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed, overturning the Ninth Circuit’s decision in Horne v. USDA, ruling the farmers could not be fined for keeping their crop, and that they were due fair compensation.

The issue was whether the Raisin Administrative Committee (RAC), under the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937, could require farmers to set aside large percentage of the crop for the government to deal with as it wished without just compensation.

The government had argued that because it often sold the crop and returned profits to the farmers, that satisfied the Fifth Amendment. Marvin and Lorna Horne disagreed, barring the government’s truck from their property. The Court sided with the farmers.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the decision for the 8-1 majority (which narrowed on certain issues). There were three main findings.

First, the Court found that the Fifth Amendment required the government to pay just compensation even if the property at issue was personal property and not “real” property (i.e. land or real estate).

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