In a rare win for private property this week, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of raisin farmers’ refusal to give the state their extra produce without just compensation.
Since 1937’s Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act, growers of raisins have been forced to relinquish part of their supply so the gov. can reserve them and artificially raise the market price. 78 years later and umpteen livelihoods squandered if not lost, the practice of unpaid federal hoarding has been ruled unconstitutional.
Regulations spawned from Depression era panic, the orders were meant to stabilize prices of all crops, but decades later punish raisin raisers for productivity. With the Act came a Raisin Administrative Committee who tells the farmers how much to grow each year and then doles a percentage of that yield to low-paying “packers.”
These packers put the raisins in a reserve vat marked to not be sold in the U.S.. They can, however, be put into public school lunches and cheaply sold overseas, leaving the producer with amputated profits.
Originally, farmers were supposed to be compensated for the excess raisins, but Federal profitability on the raisins kept falling, too. In 2003, farmers received nothing for handing over 47% of their produce.
If you tried to circumvent the system and sell all your raisins like Marvin and Laura Horne—plaintiffs of the Supreme Court case—the USDA would fine you hundreds of thousands and claim you owe additional money to replace the raisins not surrendered.
The Hornes fought for 10 years, arguing that the Fifth Amendment guarantees citizens protection from unreasonable search and seizure, especially without reimbursement for damages.
Eight out of nine Justices agree with the Hornes that the New Deal program has been unfair, that “The Fifth Amendment requires that the Government pay just compensation when it takes personal property, just as when it takes real property.”
The sour grape in the bunch, Justice Sonia Sotomayor [who came to fame when President Obama appointed her in 2009], dissents. Sotomayor contends that because the gov. did not confiscate the entirety of a grower’s harvest, the Agricultural Order “does not effect a per se ‘taking’” of private property.
Talk about reading the law to the letter, crooked gov. employees!
Will somebody let Sotomayor know, if you take somebody’s wallet but not their bag, you still took something?
Though Sotomayor has not always ruled against property rights cases—at least in her years as a New York judge—it highlights a disturbing trend undermining faith in individuals, rather than gov., to succeed.
If the Hornes want to risk selling their raisins on their own instead of risking the gov. bilk them out of a refund, who is Sotomayor to tell them not to control their own harmless business?
Ironic position from a woman whose yearbook quote was “I am not a champion of lost causes, but of causes not yet won.” But then again, she was quoting Norman Thomas, the six-time presidential candidate of the Socialist Party of America.
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