An Ohio engineer turned brewery owner is asking the Supreme Court to strike down a 150-year-old federal law that makes home distilling a felony, and a split between two appeals courts may force the justices to take the case.
John Ream wants to make small batches of spirits in his own home for himself and his wife, Kristin. Federal law says he cannot, not a barrel, not a bottle, not a single ounce. Under a statute that dates to 1868, home distillation of spirits is a federal crime punishable by significant fines and prison time, even when every drop is for personal use. Americans can legally brew beer at home. They can make wine. But fire up a still for whiskey, and Washington treats it the same as counterfeiting or bank fraud: a felony.
Robert Alt, the president and CEO of the Buckeye Institute and Ream's attorney, put the double standard plainly in comments reported by Fox News:
"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."
That gap, legal for one kind of alcohol, a crime for another, sits at the center of a constitutional fight that now has two federal appeals courts pointing in opposite directions. And when appeals courts disagree, the Supreme Court typically steps in.
Eleven days before the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Ream in April, the Fifth Circuit reached the opposite conclusion in a separate challenge to the same federal ban. The Fifth Circuit found that Congress's taxing power did not justify criminalizing a private, non-commercial activity inside a citizen's home. The Sixth Circuit disagreed, holding that the restriction could lawfully support the collection of federal excise taxes on distilled spirits.
That contradiction, known in legal shorthand as a circuit split, is exactly the kind of conflict the Supreme Court exists to resolve. Just The News reported that the Sixth Circuit upheld the ban under the Constitution's Necessary and Proper Clause, while the Fifth Circuit struck it down, making Supreme Court review virtually inevitable.
Andrew M. Grossman, a senior legal fellow at the Buckeye Institute, said the organization anticipates the Supreme Court resolving the conflict between the two circuits. Alt was more direct about Ream's intentions:
"John Ream will seek Supreme Court review of this decision, and looks forward to being vindicated."
Both cases have now been petitioned to the high court. The justices have not yet agreed to hear either one. Alt acknowledged the long odds in raw numbers: the Supreme Court receives between 7,000 and 10,000 petitions every year and currently hears roughly 60 cases. But a live circuit split sharply improves the chances.
The court has had a busy docket in recent terms, weighing in on voting rules, congressional maps, and federal enforcement authority, all areas where lower courts have forced the justices' hand by reaching conflicting conclusions.
Ream's path to the Supreme Court started with a gift. His then-fiancée Kristin gave him a home-brewing kit, and the former aerospace engineer took to it immediately. He told the Buckeye Institute that brewing hooked him because it merged two things he already loved:
"Brewing was the perfect combination of art and science, and my engineering brain just totally latched onto it."
Years of experimentation followed. Eventually, John and Kristin Ream opened Trek Brewing Company in Newark, Ohio. But Ream wanted to go further, to distill spirits at home in small quantities for personal and family use. Federal law drew a hard line.
The legal question Alt is pressing goes beyond whiskey. It asks how far Congress can reach into a citizen's private life to regulate activity that is local, non-commercial, and otherwise lawful. Alt framed it as a matter of constitutional principle:
"To what extent can Congress regulate local non-commercial otherwise lawful [activity] that you engage in, in your very home? That really is the core question in this case."
That framing puts the case squarely in the tradition of limited-government challenges, the kind of dispute where the federal government must justify why it needs a criminal statute to control what a private citizen does with grain, water, and heat inside his own house.
The federal government's authority over distilled spirits traces back to the earliest days of the republic. In 1791, the government began taxing distilled spirits, a move that, according to the National Archives, sparked the Whiskey Rebellion several years later, when frontier farmers resisted federal tax collectors.
Congress responded by tightening control. In 1868, lawmakers enacted a broader regulatory system for distilled spirits that included restrictions on where distilleries could operate. The stated concern was tax evasion: home stills made it easy to produce spirits without paying the federal excise tax.
More than 150 years later, the federal government still leans on that same rationale. Its argument in court is that the home-distilling ban remains a permissible tool to protect and collect federal excise taxes. The Fifth Circuit found that argument insufficient. The Sixth Circuit accepted it.
The question for the Supreme Court, if it takes the case, is whether a tax-collection justification from the Reconstruction era can sustain a federal felony in 2026, one that applies even when no spirits are sold, no revenue is lost, and the entire operation fits inside a private kitchen. Similar questions about federal overreach have surfaced in other cases heading toward the high court, where lower courts have split on the boundaries of congressional power.
One notable absence from Ream's corner: the American Homebrewers Association. The Boulder, Colorado-based trade group said this year that it does not have an official position on legalizing home distilling. It acknowledged that some of its members distill at home but emphasized education and safety around beverage-making hobbies rather than legal advocacy.
That neutrality leaves Ream and the Buckeye Institute carrying the constitutional argument largely on their own. The Buckeye Institute, an Ohio-based think tank where Alt serves as president and CEO, has positioned the case as a test of limited government, not a crusade for cheap bourbon.
Alt closed his public comments with a line that doubled as a toast and a mission statement:
"This would be a wonderful opportunity to raise a glass to freedom and to limited government."
If the Supreme Court grants review, it will face a question that reaches well beyond liquor. The case asks whether Congress can criminalize purely personal, non-commercial conduct inside a private home based on a taxing power rationale, even when no tax is evaded, no product is sold, and no commerce crosses state lines. The answer could reshape the boundaries of federal regulatory authority over private life.
The justices have shown willingness in recent terms to revisit long-settled assumptions about federal power, from immigration detention authority to the scope of administrative enforcement. A circuit split on home distilling gives them a clean vehicle to do it again.
Several open questions remain. The Supreme Court has not disclosed whether the petitions are still pending or have been scheduled for conference. No specific docket numbers have been made public in available reporting. And it is unclear whether Ream has faced any personal penalties under the statute or filed his challenge preemptively, before federal agents ever showed up at his door.
What is clear is the underlying absurdity of the status quo: a man who legally owns and operates a brewery cannot walk into his own kitchen and distill a few ounces of whiskey without risking a federal felony conviction. The law treats a hobbyist with a copper pot the same way it treats a bootlegger running an underground operation. Some members of Congress have pushed for structural changes to the court itself, but the more immediate question is whether nine justices will use this case to remind Washington that the Constitution still limits what the federal government can regulate inside a citizen's home.
When the government needs a felony statute to stop a man from making whiskey for his wife, limited government isn't an abstraction, it's a kitchen-table issue.