US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional • Hacker News Board

Re: US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional

#31

Post by Joker_vD » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 3:42 PM UTC

semiquaver wrote: post #11

> [Judge Edith Jones] also said that under the government’s logic, Congress could criminalize virtually any in-home activity Well, yeah. This is essentially the holding in Wickard v. Filburn, which seems to be in tension with this decision (overturning that would be great but it’s not the role of the circuit courts of appeal to do preemptively)

Also, this line is quite funny on its own because while understand what she actually meant, it can be very easily reinterpreted as "only actions committed out-of-home should be crimes; murdered someone in your home? welp, our hands are tied, have a nice day".

Re: US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional

#32

Post by tyre » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 3:42 PM UTC

bsimpson wrote: post #13

Do this one next: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich The Supreme Court somehow held that the feds can regulate what you do in your own home (in this case, growing marijuana for personal use) because it could have a butterfly effect on the interstate price. (Constitutionally, the feds can only regulate _interstate_ commerce.)

Another case based on interstate commerce: the US ban on racial segregation. The example given, iirc, was restaurant competition across state lines.

Re: US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional

#33

Post by superjan » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 3:44 PM UTC

Might as well plug this recent Criminal Podcast episode: https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-358-the-formula-3-27-2026

TLDL: During prohibition, US government required adding 5% methanol to industrial alcohol, hoping that this would stop bootleggers from selling it as liquor. It was sold anyway, resulting in many deaths.

Re: US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional

#34

Post by htx80nerd » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 3:44 PM UTC

gostsamo wrote: post #9

ryandamm wrote: post #4

Missed in the previous discussion: methanol is irrelevant. Grain based ferments have essentially zero methanol.(And methanol risk is a function of its concentration relative to ethanol — the treatment for methanol poisoning is… ethanol!) even fruit based fermentations with significantly higher pectin concentrations only produce trace methanol, and it’s not all that well concentrated in a distillation due to azeotrope…

As someone living in the Balkans, home brewing is a national passtime for every nation around. When every family has its own recipe for brewing alcohol, killing ourselves would've been achieved many centuries ago if it was a real concern. Methanol is an issue when some dumbshit decides to cell chemically produced trash on industrial scale instead of buying the expensive ingredients.

almost every year there is a news story of some Western tourist visiting another country dying from bootleg methanol alcohol

Re: US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional

#35

Post by mothballed » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 3:46 PM UTC

gbear605 wrote: post #30

jmyeet wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked at the actual decision [1] and didn't see Filburn mentioned once. I find that odd. Filburn [2] was a controversial and far-reaching decision that said that the Federal government's ability to regulate interstate commerce extended to people growing wheat on their own property for their own use. The rationale was that by growing wheat you weren't participating in the interstate wheat market. That seems like a…

It's possible that the government thought that if they did try to challenge the Commerce Clause analysis, then the Supreme Court could have struck down Filburn. They'd much rather lose narrowly on this specific case than have Filburn reversed entirely.

SCOTUS did a pretty hilarious soft "strike down" of Wickard where they basically determined the gun free school zone act (GFSZA) violated interstate commerce clause. So congress just added "in interstate commerce" to the GFSZA and now it does the exact same thing even if there was no interstate commerce involved, and nothing involved ever crossed state lines or actually entered interstate commerce.

So SCOTUS basically solved this by saying the law had to say "in interstate commerce" but it is basically just there as a talisman to ward away challenges, a distinction without any difference as it becomes a tautology.

Re: US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional

#36

Post by Der_Einzige » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 3:46 PM UTC

tyre wrote: post #32

bsimpson wrote: post #13

Do this one next: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich The Supreme Court somehow held that the feds can regulate what you do in your own home (in this case, growing marijuana for personal use) because it could have a butterfly effect on the interstate price. (Constitutionally, the feds can only regulate _interstate_ commerce.)

Another case based on interstate commerce: the US ban on racial segregation. The example given, iirc, was restaurant competition across state lines.

I wouldn't be surprised if this one unironically goes given that Uber/Lyft are fully doing "women only" ride shares now.

Gen Z / Alpha have embraced X-"realism" and fully accept essentialism/reject "intersectionality". They're far more conservative/prudish than millennials, even at their young age.

Re: US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional

#37

Post by tt24 » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 3:46 PM UTC

tyre wrote: post #32

bsimpson wrote: post #13

Do this one next: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich The Supreme Court somehow held that the feds can regulate what you do in your own home (in this case, growing marijuana for personal use) because it could have a butterfly effect on the interstate price. (Constitutionally, the feds can only regulate _interstate_ commerce.)

Another case based on interstate commerce: the US ban on racial segregation. The example given, iirc, was restaurant competition across state lines.

The interstate commerce clause is just craziness. It touches everything and gives justification to regulate nearly anything.

Re: US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional

#38

Post by mothballed » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 3:50 PM UTC

tt24 wrote: post #37

tyre wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another case based on interstate commerce: the US ban on racial segregation. The example given, iirc, was restaurant competition across state lines.

The interstate commerce clause is just craziness. It touches everything and gives justification to regulate nearly anything.

You could just as easily stuff most of those things under the "general welfare" clause if you do the same rigamarole of years and years of precedent hand-waving. We live in a post constitutional state. The constitution is just something worked to backwards so the guys who function as our priests/gods point to the document because that's the only way to feign some sort of legitimacy to our government.

Ultimately none of us signed the constitution and all of those people that did are dead. It is a religious artifact used by the whig -god people to argue they are right. Not something followed with faith to the historical context nor literal contract.

(edit: to below trying to compare bad-faith ICC to good-faith general welfare, you must apply similar levels of creativity and bad faith. Ban things through high or impossible to pay taxation. "Tax" behavior to force people to do something in a certain way, make very heavy penalties for not paying the tax, and also make it extremely difficult to buy the tax stamps (this is how they did drug control until they decided to use the new fraud of "interstate" commerce).

Re: US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional

#39

Post by gostsamo » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 3:52 PM UTC

htx80nerd wrote: post #34

gostsamo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone living in the Balkans, home brewing is a national passtime for every nation around. When every family has its own recipe for brewing alcohol, killing ourselves would've been achieved many centuries ago if it was a real concern. Methanol is an issue when some dumbshit decides to cell chemically produced trash on industrial scale instead of buying the expensive ingredients.

almost every year there is a news story of some Western tourist visiting another country dying from bootleg methanol alcohol

As I said, this happens when someone tries to sell illegally produced trash created not by brewing but with sugar, chemical essence, and whatever they've mistaken for ethanol. The tax on alcohol creates a black market and some people taking part in it are either dumb or lazy and those are the cases you hear about.

Re: US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional

#40

Post by tdb7893 » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 3:53 PM UTC

bsimpson wrote: post #13

Do this one next: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich The Supreme Court somehow held that the feds can regulate what you do in your own home (in this case, growing marijuana for personal use) because it could have a butterfly effect on the interstate price. (Constitutionally, the feds can only regulate _interstate_ commerce.)

I think much more likely is that it will just be made legal federally sometime in the next decade. Marijuana legalization has majorities across ideologies (https://news.gallup.com/poll/514007/grassroots-support-legal...) and even though the inability to create federal law on something so popular seems like a good case study on how the US system doesn't always do a good job representing it's actual people, it seems to be at a critical mass where it can't be ignored for much longer. Even my parents' friends who are conservative have started doing weed.