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Wickard v. Filburn
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued May 4, 1942 Reargued October 13, 1942 Decided November 9, 1942
Full case name: Claude R. Wickard, Secretary of Agriculture, et al. v. Roscoe C. Filburn Citations: 317 U.S. 111; 63 S. Ct. 82; 87 L. Ed. 122; 1942 U.S. LEXIS 1046 Prior history: Injunction granted to plaintiff, Filburn v. Helke, 43 F. Supp. 1017 (S.D. Ohio 1942)
Holding
Production quotas under the Agricultural Adjustment Act were constitutionally applied to agricultural production that was consumed purely intrastate, because its effect upon interstate commerce placed it within the power of Congress to regulate under the Commerce Clause. Southern District of Ohio reversed.
Court membership
Chief Justice: Harlan Fiske Stone Associate Justices: Owen Josephus Roberts, Hugo Black, Stanley Forman Reed, Felix Frankfurter, William O. Douglas, Frank Murphy, James F. Byrnes, Robert H. Jackson
Case opinions
Majority by: Jackson Joined by: unanimous
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amends. I, V; 7 U.S.C. § 1281, et. seq. (1941) (Agricultural Adjustment Act)

Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942), is a United States Supreme Court decision interpreting the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution, which permits the United States Congress to "regulate Commerce . . . among the several States."

Contents 1 Background of the case 1.1 Amount of wheat at issue 2 The Court's decision 3 Subsequent jurisprudence 4 References 5 Further reading 6 External links

During the New Deal, under the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938, the government imposed quotas on the production of a number of crops, including wheat. Roscoe Filburn was a farmer who produced wheat in excess of the amount permitted under the applicable production quota. He argued that, because the excess wheat was produced for his private consumption on his own farm, it never entered commerce at all, much less interstate commerce, and therefore was not a proper subject of federal regulation under the Commerce Clause.

Roscoe Filburn exceeded his production quota by 239 excess bushels. To consume this amount in the form of bread, Mr. Filburn and his family would have had to consume nearly 44 one-pound loaves each day for the following year.[1]

The Supreme Court rejected this argument, holding that Filburn's wheat competed with wheat sold in interstate commerce. The Court reasoned that if Filburn had not used home-grown wheat, he would have had to buy wheat on the open market. The Court held that Congress's power to regulate commerce was not limited to the supply side of commerce, but that it could regulate demand as well. The Court also held that Congress could regulate wholly intrastate, non-commercial activity if such activity, viewed in the aggregate, would have a substantial effect on interstate commerce, even if the individual effects are trivial.

Wickard has often been seen as marking the end to any limits on Congress's commerce clause powers. One commentator has written: “In the wake of Jones & Laughlin and Wickard [v. Filburn], it has become clear that . . . Congress has authority to regulate virtually all private economic activity.”^[1]

In the landmark 1995 case of United States v. Lopez, the first decision in six decades to invalidate a federal statute on the grounds that it exceeded the power of Congress under the commerce clause of the United States Constitution, the Supreme Court described Filburn as "perhaps the most far reaching example of commerce clause authority over intrastate commerce." The Supreme Court majority that decided the 2005 case Gonzales v. Raich relied heavily on Filburn in upholding the power of the federal government to prosecute individuals who grow their own medicinal marijuana pursuant to state law. In Gonzales, the court held that, as with the home grown wheat at issue in Filburn, home grown marijuana is a legitimate subject of federal regulation because it competes with marijuana that moves in interstate commerce.

1. ^ Earl M. Maltz as quoted in footnote 223 of Jim Chen, "Filburn's Legacy," 52 Emory Law Journal 1719 (2003)

• Jim Chen, "Filburn's Legacy," 52 Emory Law Journal 1719 (2003)
• Richard A. Epstein, How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution, Cato Institute, 2006

• 317 U.S. 111 (Text of the opinion on Findlaw.com)
• Text of the opinion from Cornell University's Legal Information Institute
• oyez.org on the case (short)
• Roscoe Filburn and his wheat
• Emory Law Journal essay on Wickard v. Filburn