Last week the Supreme Court announced it would revisit the important case of Horne v. USDA. The case, which I first wrote about here in 2013 after attending the Court’s first hearing on it, centers on a USDA program that forces those who traffic in raisins (“handlers,” in USDA raisin parlance) to turn over cash or a significant part of their crop—sometimes almost fifty percent—to the USDA without compensation.
In Horne, the eponymous family, which markets raisins, sued the USDA to force the agency to compensate them if the USDA forced them (along with raisin handlers around the country) to turn over cash or almost half their raisin crop to the agency in return for the purported privilege of handling raisins.
The Hornes effectively sued to stop the government from stealing their raisins, arguing that the USDA program amounts to an unconstitutional taking under the Fifth Amendment.
...While the Horne case concerns the USDA’s raisin programs, the case outcome could have widespread impact for farmers around the country—and could put an end to a host of superfluous, wasteful USDA programs. Why? Because the USDA’s raisin marketing order program is just one of dozens of similar programs.
Similar USDA marketing order programs are in place for almonds, apricots, avocados, cherries (both sweet and tart), Florida and Texas citrus, cranberries, dates, grapes, hazelnuts, kiwifruit, olives, many onions and pears, pistachios, California plums and prunes, many potatoes, raisins, spearmint oil, tomatoes, and walnuts.
These programs are responsible for pervasive regulation of the respective industries.
The spearmint oil marketing order, for example, governs all spearmint oil sold in the country. It “authorizes volume control measures to regulate the marketing of spearmint oil through annual sales allotments,” according to the USDA. “Spearmint oil produced in excess of a grower’s allotment is placed into a reserve pool and used later to fill production deficiencies and unexpected demand.”
Note the government’s use of passive voice, which I italicized. The words “is placed… and used” sound a whole lot more constitutional than the more accurate “we take… and use.”
No comments:
Post a Comment