A petition filed with the United States Supreme Court on 20 July 2026 has placed the Ream home distilling ban at the centre of a constitutional dispute that could reshape the limits of congressional power under both the Taxing Clause and the Commerce Clause. The case, Ream v. U.S. Department of Treasury (Docket No. 26-93), arises from a federal prohibition enacted in 1868 that makes it a criminal offence to operate a still in any dwelling house or connected structure.
The petitioner, John Ream, is a former Boeing aerospace engineer and co-owner, with his wife Kristin, of Trek Brewing Company in Newark, Ohio. He filed his original complaint in the Southern District of Ohio on 30 January 2024 (Case No. 2:24-CV-364). After the district court dismissed that complaint, he appealed, giving rise to Sixth Circuit Case No. 25-3259.
The Buckeye Institute represents Ream, with Andrew M. Grossman of BakerHostetler LLP serving as counsel of record. Robert Alt, president and chief executive of the Buckeye Institute, has put the stakes plainly: ‘It is perfectly legal to make beer at home or to make wine at home, but if you make even a single ounce of distilled spirits at home, it is a federal felony.’
A Circuit Split in Eleven Days
Two federal appellate courts examined the same statutory provisions within eleven days of each other and reached opposite conclusions. The Fifth Circuit’s decision in McNutt v. U.S. Department of Justice, 173 F.4th 204 (5th Cir. 2026), came first. That court held that the home-distilling prohibition ‘is not a proper means of exercising the tax power’ because it ‘takes away Plaintiffs’ choice to pay the tax’ and found that Congress had ‘improperly’ invaded the reserved police power of the states. The plaintiff organisation in that companion case claimed more than 1,300 members as of 2023, many of whom had devoted time and money to advancing legalisation.
Eleven days later, on 23 April 2026, the Sixth Circuit ruled 2-1 the other way in the 158-year-old ban is constitutional, concluding it is ‘a necessary and proper means of collecting the federal excise tax on spirits’ because stills could be concealed from revenue officers, and rejecting the argument that upholding the restriction would expand Congress’s power beyond proper limits.
That divergence is the engine of the cert petition. The Buckeye Institute filed its reply brief on 1 September 2026, with Grossman stating that the government had effectively conceded that Supreme Court review of the federal ban is warranted. Ream has consistently stated his intention to pay all applicable taxes on any spirits he distils and has no history of dispute with the Internal Revenue Service; he does not propose to sell or offer to the public anything he produces at home.
The Ream Home Distilling Ban and the Commerce Clause
The federal government advances two constitutional justifications: the Article I taxing power and the Interstate Commerce Clause, both read in conjunction with the Necessary and Proper Clause. Neither lower court resolved the Commerce Clause argument directly, but that defence remains alive on appeal and could be addressed by the Supreme Court.
The Commerce Clause question turns on two prior decisions. In Wickard v. Filburn (1942), the Court held that a farmer could be prohibited from growing wheat for home consumption, adopting the ‘aggregation principle’: that individual acts of home production, taken collectively, could have a substantial effect on interstate commerce. Roscoe Filburn had grown 11.9 extra acres of wheat for his own use. In Gonzales v. Raich (2005), the Court extended that logic to uphold federal criminalisation of homegrown cannabis, on the basis that home production of a commodity is part of a broader ‘class of activities’ with substantial commercial effects.
The government’s theory in Ream follows the same trajectory: a home distiller who produces his own spirits is less likely to buy them on the open market, and aggregate substitution could substantially affect interstate commerce. Critics, including Ilya Shapiro and Trevor Burrus in an amicus curiae brief filed with the Supreme Court on 20 August 2026, argue that this reasoning would reach ‘virtually every other household activity’ and give federal authorities power over ‘all ordinary household life’, from herb gardens to home schooling.
The cert petition urges the Court to reconsider Raich directly. It draws a comparison with homebrewing: Congress legalised home production of beer and wine decades ago, and that liberalisation, the petition argues, ‘revitalised beer culture in the United States’. Home distilling could achieve the same, but for the federal prohibition.
A Congressional Research Service report (LSB11459), published on 27 July 2026, has since summarised the Fifth and Sixth Circuit division for legislators, underlining that the constitutional question is now live in both Congress and the courts. The last time the Supreme Court issued a major Commerce Clause holding was NFIB v. Sebelius (2012), which found that the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate exceeded congressional commerce power.
Subject to any conference decision by the Court, the Ream cert petition and the government’s response will determine whether the justices take up a dispute that goes to the outer boundary of federal power in the home. The Buckeye Institute’s appellate brief preserved the Raich challenge from the outset of the litigation, meaning the Court could address it squarely if it grants certiorari.
