Question: Does the Constitution's interstate commerce clause give Congress the power to regulate how much wheat a farmer can grow for his own consumption, if it's never sold to anyone else and never crosses state lines?
The district court said no. The Supreme Court said yes.
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.
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.
That is quite literally within the original Constitutional scope of the interstate commerce clause. No amendment needed...
Prohibition required an amendment because at the time most alcohol was brewed/distilled/whatever locally and sold locally, so the amount of interstate alcohol commerce was limited and would not have survived constitutional review. (Now, most alcohol is made in a few states and sold nationally, so the interstate commerce clause would apply as a matter of original scope.)
(Or, I’m totally misinterpreting this).
A sales tax is a purely local tax--an item must be purchased in person so the transaction is always local.
A use tax is a interstate tax, and applies where the good is purchased in one state but brought into another. For online sales, where the purchase is treated as occurring in the location of the buyer, it is technically a "use" tax that applies (because the item is sold in one state but actually shipped to another state), which is why the federal government can theoretically pass a national "sales" tax law for internet commerce and why states can't impose a sales tax on items sold online directly to out-of-state customers.
Yes, it's complicated, especially since most sales and use tax laws generally use the term "sales" tax to refer to what is actually a "use" tax.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerce_Clause#The_Rehnquist_...
Based on the actual reasoning of the SCOTUS in Wickard, you would be quite wrong.
Grow man: This is personal use only!
Tax man: Nuh uh!