

Supreme Court: Raisin board unconstitutional - beefman
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-court-california-raisins-20150623-story.html

======
beefman
Non-paywalled story

[http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/06/22/416538...](http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/06/22/416538131/california-
raisin-growers-get-their-day-in-the-sun)

Decision

[https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/14-275](https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/14-275)

Previous discussion on HN

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5855890](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5855890)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5476048](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5476048)

~~~
esturk
Why does NPR still require Flash for audio playback in this day and age?

~~~
vampirechicken
flash cookies are less well known to people. Even the casual "privacy
conscious" web user tend to be unaware that flash drop its own flash cookies
that don't clear with the browsers "clear cookies" function.

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ageek123
It's hard not to sympathize with the folks who have been saying all along that
Sotomayor is an extremist, in light of her views in this case, which was an
8-1 decision.

~~~
ubernostrum
If you read her dissent, it's hard to characterize as "extreme". Slightly
arcane, perhaps, and disagreeing on a fine point of the definition of a _per
se_ taking, but not extreme at all and seemingly something that reasonable
(and presumably well-informed-enough to be debating that technical definition)
people could disagree on.

Meanwhile the case itself is being severely misrepresented in media coverage.

The raisin program, as it had been run, basically had three steps:

1\. A committee made up of farmers and others in the raisin business decide on
a percentage of that year's crop to set aside.

2\. Farmers set aside that percentage of their crop, and pass it to the
committee.

3\. Any profit left after administrative fees from the sale of those raisins
is distributed to the farmers.

The big question was _not_ whether the government lacks the power to run this
kind of program, but whether this program is the government taking private
property for public use, and (if it is) whether the payment for taking the
property has to occur up-front.

The eight Justices in the majority agreed it was taking of private property
for public use (Sotomayor disagreed on a technical aspect of the definition,
hence her dissent). But those eight did _not_ agree entirely on whether the
government would have to pay up-front; five of them said yes, three others
said no and that it should go back to a lower court to determine if the raisin
growers were entitled to compensation (since the program was meant to, and
apparently succeeded at, keeping raising prices higher -- in which case they
might _not_ be entitled to any further cash payment).

~~~
tanderson92
> disagreeing on a fine point of the definition of a per se taking

While I agree some of her dissent is indeed technical and should not be
considered extreme, there are certainly some extreme elements. To wit, from
her dissent,

"...insofar as the Hornes wish to sell some raisins in a market regulated by
the Government and at a price supported by governmental intervention, the
Order requires that they give up the right to sell a portion of those raisins
at that price and instead accept disposal of them at a lower price."

I think most reasonable people would not consider that to be ordinary
government regulation; forcing farmers to sell at a particular if they wish to
participate in the "free" market in fact sounds like certain horror stories
you hear about socialist regimes (note: I am not imparting any judgement on
President Obama here w.r.t. socialism).

~~~
ubernostrum
Economically, if the program exists, the only sensible thing is for it to be
mandatory. Otherwise you run into a situation where it's possible for some
farmers to get the benefit of the program (higher prices for their crop)
without paying for the program (by setting aside some of their crop) and the
whole thing collapses.

Also, programs of this nature are old enough that it's really difficult to try
to put current interpretations of labels like "socialist" on them; many of the
people involved in originally drafting, passing and implementing this stuff
would've been, by modern standards, too conservative even for the Tea Party.

(though there is a useful more-recent term to apply here: since the New Deal,
farmers and ranchers have essentially been the biggest welfare queens in the
United States, to the tune of billions upon billions of dollars in subsidies,
tax breaks, favorable land/water rates and government-run price-fixing
programs, and generally the anti-"socialism" forces in our government have no
problem with requiring welfare recipients to make sacrifices in return for the
benefits, so why not be consistent about it?)

~~~
tanderson92
I agree, existence must imply the program being mandatory, for exactly the
reasons you describe. But perhaps the fact that the justices nearly-
unanimously agreed on its unconstitionality means it should not have existed?
You have to argue the legality of the program on the merits, not on the basis
of "well, if we didn't violate the constitution, the program would not work".

And yeah, I am not trying to pass judgement using the label of socialism, I am
trying to draw parallels to what people often decry as one of the evils of
socialist states. I understand that these programs were not created in such a
context; I certainly do not care about party affiliations or political
leanings, only the direct, observable outcomes of the program.

~~~
ubernostrum
I think it's hard to view in terms of timelessly constitutional or not; the
Court's favored interpretations of bits of the Constitution have shifted back
and forth widely since the Supreme Court was established.

So I suspect the strongest possible statement is that this is a program most
people accepted as constitutional without much controversy at the time of the
New Deal, but since then the Court's interpretation (and the political climate
in the country, of which the Court is for better or worse a reflection) has
shifted.

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tehwalrus
They talk about impact for other government seizure powers- could this have an
effect on that awful Civil Forfeiture practise?

~~~
vampirechicken
Probably not, but it might have an effect on compensation in eminent domain
cases.

------
jakeogh
Audio:
[http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/audio/2014/14-275](http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/audio/2014/14-275)

mp3:
[http://www.supremecourt.gov/media/audio/mp3files/14-275.mp3](http://www.supremecourt.gov/media/audio/mp3files/14-275.mp3)

@ about 17:30 a discussion begins about the difference between taking records
and taking other things. The defendant's lawyer argued that taking the raisins
is a taking of property and taking records (in most cases) is not. He kinda
had to argue that because he was pressed. Maybe it's a positive sign that the
court was asking about it in the context of this decision. If nothing else,
the intrinsic privacy of information in itself has value.

The prosecution crashes and burns off the line @ 25:00 the wreck continues,
48:18 ha.

~~~
rtpg
I love listening to the oral arguments, there's a lot of absurd arguments in a
lot of these. Helps to illuminate a lot of rulings that seem out of touch at
first glance.

------
tormeh
I bet some kind of indecent person will complain that patent expiry is
government seizure of property. I mean, it's taking property and giving it to
everyone. Come to think of it, it can actually sound like internationalist
communism if you put it the right way. I expect someone will.

But yeah, this particular piece of regulation seems to have outlived its
purpose.

~~~
jakeogh
There's no good argument to own an idea forever.

~~~
PhantomGremlin
It's funny how that logic does apply to patents, but not to Disney and Mickey
Mouse.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Oh, it _applies_ to Disney and Mickey Mouse, it's unfortunately just not
_applied_ to them.

