When I moderated a panel at the Notre Dame Wine, Beer, and Spirits Symposium on DTC shipping and 21st Amendment challenges, a debate sprung up from pro-shipping advocates on the proper standard for judging a discriminatory state liquor law. On one side of the argument was the believe that discriminatory state liquor laws are subject […]
The Ohio Attorney General has decided not to seek cert with the United States Supreme Court. On September 27th, the Sixth Circuit issued an order, which stayed the Sixth Circuit’s decision, which reversed and remanded a lower court decision upholding Ohio’s discriminatory shipping law. The Stay was issued at the request of the Ohio AG, […]
California can’t get out of their way in being business unfriendly and it amazes me that big wine interest groups let them travel down this road so easily. We seem to be slowly turning back the clock from Granholm, where barriers to entry were destroyed, to an environment where barriers to entry are becoming commonplace […]
Takeaways
The Court took an absolute Commerce Clause position and relied on a U.S. Supreme Court case, which permits discrimination only when absolutely necessary.
The Court further dismissed the state’s claim that the 21st Amendment shields state discriminatory laws from Commerce Clause challenges. It held that the state misreads U.S. Supreme Court precedent […]
Recently, it was announced through a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) press release, that the FTC filed a petition in federal court to force Total Wine and More (Total) to produce documents related to the FTC’s investigation into Southern Wine and Spirits (Southern). The FTC order sought documents from Total “as part of its investigation into […]
The 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Anvar v. Dwyer (1st circuit decision) affirmed the district court in part, vacated it in part, and remanded for further proceedings.
Takeaways
The 1st Circuit vacated the district court’s decision in very strong terms. It rejected theoretical arguments about essential elements, health and safety, […]
Two recent decisions on wine retailer shipping cases out of Arizona ( Arizona Decision) and New Jersey (NJ Decision) federal courts show how judges are misunderstanding the issues and flat out getting it wrong.
In Arizona much of the decision was based on the judge’s conclusion that siding with the retailer would “require complete […]
On July 26, 2023 arguments took place in Anvar v. Dwyer, which challenged Rhode Island’s law, which only allows their in-state retailers to deliver wine to Rhode Island consumers, but denies this same privilege to out-of-state wine retailers. Along with this facially discriminatory law, there was a discriminatory in effect Commerce Clause challenge to the […]
Important factors
Before going into a summary of the legal decision, I wanted to provide some major points on why this decision, Block v. Canepa, is of paramount importance.
The first post Tennessee Wine decision on wine retailer shipping was Lebamoff v. Whitmer, where the Sixth Circuit found Michigan’s discriminatory wine retailer shipping […]
The Sixth Circuit reversed (Block v. Canepa) a decision from an Ohio Federal District Court upholding Ohio’s discriminatory wine retailer shipping law. The Sixth Circuit held that the case needs to be remanded back to the district court for further proceedings and that the District Court failed to consider the evidence provided by the […]