The right to use your property isn’t a privilege the government can force you to pay for

The Supreme Court today issued its decision in the Horne raisin seizure case. This case involves a 70+ year old program in which the government annually confiscates as much as half the raisin crop of California, for the express purpose of making them more expensive. This sort of insanity was considered cutting-edge economic theory in FDR’s day.

Anyway, raisin producers challenged this program on the argument that since the government is taking away their raisins, they’re at least entitled to just compensation. The government answered, no: selling your raisins in interstate commerce is a “privilege,” and the government can charge you a “toll” for that privilege. The exchange on this point during the oral argument was shocking.

“The government has not taken the raisins,” argued Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler. “This program operates only when the producer, the grower, has voluntarily submitted—committed the raisins to the stream of commerce.”

Justice Scalia balked. “The government can—can prevent you from putting something into the stream of commerce? Can charge you for putting something into the stream?”

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