Looks like everyone in Illinois needs a friend who lives in Wisconsin, Indiana or Missouri.
Unfortunately the 21st amendment has this troubling section:
Section 2. The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.
It’s the price we paid for the end of prohibition. If you guys would prefer the 18th amendment back instead…
“(The bill) protects the health and safety of Illinois consumers by promoting compliance with state law.”
The bill is good because it encourages people to follow laws? Am I reading this correctly?
Every time I consider buying something from Hart Davis Hart or Flickinger, I think about the IL shipping laws, and it bothers me. I feel I shouldn’t support IL by buying anything from their retailers when they don’t reciprocate.
This law doesn’t affect me directly, but I am writing to the retail stores in ILL with which I do and have done business and telling them that I will not order from them until this law is repealed. I don’t have regular go-to Ill retailers I use, but on occasion I have bought from them. No longer. Let’s see if we can apply a little pressure in the reverse direction
The retailers have no pull Neal. You are punishing the wrong people.
The retailers working with the people could easily have more pull. But… They need to organize. Raise money. Fight back. Is anyone likely to step up and lead?
And as someone noted earlier… the commerce clause in the constitution could be brought to bear.
Commerce Clause - Wikipedia My gut says this is the easiest course of action. However, easy doesn’t mean best because it’s tough to predict outcomes. It could make things worse not better depending on how the courts respond.
A ballot measure could work… but in Illinois my understanding they are restricted to changing the state constitution. Could and would are likely far apart. But at least, you are putting change in the hands of the people vs. the elected pawns of big donors.
Then of course there is the fight to rewrite or reverse the new law. Here the organization and $ needed to become the BIG DONOR with CLOUT may make this option the most difficult of all.
Aggrieved wine geeks who cannot patronize out of state shops do not make for an interesting or sympathetic story.
I’ve never understood why this has never been evoked?
Invoked, but that’s another issue.
The answer is that Section 2 of the 21st Amendment expressly reserves to the states the right to regulate the importation of alcohol:
“Section 2. The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.”
I did, however, send an email to the governor of Illinois today pointing out that Illinois will not stop being the butt of every government corruption joke told in the United States until the state stops adopting laws at the behest of Southern and other special interests to the exclusion of the interests of the citizens of the state.
Maybe. But I suspect if Binnys and HDH and TCWC started screaming at Southern it might get noticed
But in 2005, the US Supreme Court determined that allowing in-state DTC shipments from wineries – but not allowing out-of-state DTC shipments from wineries – was unconstitutional. See the Wikipedia entry for the case: Granholm v. Heald - Wikipedia
So if states cannot ban out-of-state DTC shipments when they allow in-state DTC shipments, why would the same legal argument not pertain to retail shipments?
I’m pretty sure that the Illinois retailers are thrilled with this new legislation. If you can’t order from outside of Illinois, your business would default to these in-state businesses. This law basically directs all Illinois retail wine sales to HDH, TCWC, Flickinger, Binny’s, etc. What motivation would they have to resist it?
I get it. They are no doubt happy. But there has to be a cost to it.
This was my point above when I brought up the Commerce Clause. This is the very reason Virginia was unable to prevent it’s citizens from receiving direct shipments from out of state wineries and retailers. I do not understand why this would not apply in the case of IL.
I wonder what percentage of IL retailer sales are from out of state. Probably not too much, but I don’t really know.
Oh, I’m sure it applies. They just ignored it. Now that this legislation has been signed into law by the governor, it would take a lawsuit to reverse it.
So who has the capital to fund a major lawsuit against a US state, which would itself certainly be funded and defended by the powerful and deeply pocketed beverage industry? Everyday wine drinkers like us? My dollars won’t take us very far. The NAWR or an organization like Free The Grape? No chance. Such a suit would cost millions to litigate. They can have opposition position statements all they want, it’s cash that is required to move the needle.
And out-of-state retailers certainly aren’t going to band together just to capture some small fraction of one state’s wine consumption market. It’s relatively tiny in the overall wine trade. It is far easier for non-Illinois retailers to just cross us off of their list of ship-to states than to band together and sue the state, and that is exactly what will probably happen.
I think you’d need a pissed off, wealthy, wine collecting Illinoisan to actually get any momentum (i.e. funding) behind such a lawsuit. Kind of like a wine version of the Thiel/Hogan v. Gawker lawsuit. Are any of you DRC drinking Illinois ballers up for a good fight?
Just out of curiosity, I’m going to email my lawyer and ask what his estimate for a lawsuit like this would realistically cost. Maybe I’ll start a Kickstarter project if it’s under a million. Any lawyers on the forum want to chime in?
Looks like everyone in Illinois needs a friend who lives in Wisconsin, Indiana or Missouri.
Way to piss off Iowa, Joe!
This board is chock-a-full with wine-drinking lawyers who might be enticed to salivate pro bono. 
Are any of you DRC drinking Illinois ballers up for a good fight?
This hardly describes me - but - I fear one of the issues for those who live here who buy from out of state are, per my recollection, in violation of State law by not remitting sales tax on those purchases so I’m not sure who wishes to stand up and potential expose their oversight.
This cartoon hangs on the wall of my home office. It is, for me, the single greatest cartoon ever created and perfectly captures how this situation will be handled.
Yep, you’re referring to this: Illinois Bottom Feeding Lawyer Goes After Wine Shippers - Fermentation
The good news is that these are being successfully defeated:
The issue is not yet totally resolved, but I have been following this closely and it appears that there has been significant resolution of many of these Qui Tam whistleblower cases. Unfortunately, these successes really don’t matter much if it’s illegal to order wine from out of state retailers in the first place.
Love the cartoon by the way. So true.