Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Wine Impediments in Massachusetts: Update

In my Monday rant, I mentioned that the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals was hearing arguments on the appeal concerning the wine shipping law.

The state was represented by David Hadas, an assistant Massachusetts attorney general. It was his claim that the Massachusetts wine shipping law was actually "pro-competition and pro-small business. Out-of-state wineries that exceed the law’s production cap have no problem selling their products in Massachusetts through the wholesale and retail system."

The Court of Appeals probably won't issue a decision for 3-6 months. So we have to wait even longer, hoping the Court agrees with the lower court that the law was unconstitutional.

4 comments:

The Wine Whore said...

Thank you for the update... I haven't been following this as closely as I should but I am very interested to hear how it turns out!

Cheers!

Richard Auffrey said...

Sadly, we will have to wait several months to find out the conclusion, and even then, it might not be the end,

Couves said...

Thanks for the update. It’s hard to imagine that the court has much to think about here. I’ve always thought that restrictions of interstate commerce were assumed to be unconstitutional since the days of the Articles of Confederation.

Richard Auffrey said...

I do think the court will uphold that the law is unconstitutional, but we just have to wait for the process to be completed.