www.NFIB.com
For Immediate Release
Contact: Kelly Klass 609-713-4243 or [email protected]
Follow Kelly on Twitter @KellyAKlass
Follow NFIB on Twitter @NFIB
The high court found that a
California law requiring raisin growers to turn over a portion of their crop was
unconstitutional
Washington, D.C. (June 22, 2015) – In a case that
seems decades out of place, the United States Supreme Court today struck down a
Depression-era mandate forcing raisin growers to surrender portions of their
annual crop without compensation, an exercise of power that the National Federation of Independent Business
(NFIB) called a threat to American businesses of every kind.
“It sounds like something from the English feudal age, but
for almost a century the United States government has been seizing private
property under the guise of agricultural policy,” said Karen Harned, Executive Director of the NFIB Small Business Legal
Center. “If this policy had survived,
government agencies would have been able to rationalize the confiscation of
almost anything.”
The question at the heart of Horne v. the United States Department of Agriculture was whether a
federal agency is permitted to take personal property without providing just
compensation. The law under review was created during the Great
Depression to raise the price of goods by controlling the supply. Depending on market conditions, the Act
allowed the Raisin Administrative Committee to issue an order that required
raisin growers to set aside a certain percentage of each annual crop; the
Committee then confiscated those raisins and gave them away, sold them on the
open market, and even sent them abroad without providing growers with any payment.
In some years the government took as much as half of the raisin grower’s annual
crop.
“The Framers were
very clear that liberty is indivisible, and that we can’t be fully free if
government has the authority to take our property without compensation,” said
Harned. “We’re pleased by the decision
and we believe it protects businesses far beyond the agricultural industry.”
California raisin handlers argued that the USDA was
violating the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause and filed suit when they were
hit with severe fines for refusing to relinquish their crop. The
government argued that it did not owe raisin growers anything because they benefited from the program’s manipulation of prices.
“This is a very important case for small business owners
because it limits the government’s power to take private property,” Harned
continued. “It would be as if someone
came into a store and forced the owner to hand over merchandise; that’s blatant
robbery as far as we’re concerned.”
For more information about NFIB, please visit www.nfib.com.
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