Primary Source: Wickard v. Filburn (1942)

During the Great Depression, Congress passed the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938, a law regulating the production of wheat in an attempt to stabilize the economy and the nation’s food supply. In particular, this law set limits on the amount of wheat that farmers could grow on their own farms. Roscoe Filburn, a farmer, sued Claude Wickard, the Secretary of Agriculture, when he was penalized for violating the statute. Filburn argued that the amount of wheat that he produced in excess of the quota was for his personal use (e.g., feeding his own animals), not commerce (e.g., selling it on the market), and therefore could not be constitutionally regulated. The Supreme Court upheld the law, explaining that Congress could use its commerce power to regulate such activity because, even if Filburn’s actions had only a minimal impact on commerce, the aggregated effect of an individual farmer’s wheat-growing exerted a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce. In terms of the Constitution, this holding offered a broad reading of Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause.

View the case on the National Constitution Center’s Website here.

The Court’s recognition of the relevance of the economic effects in the application of the Commerce Clause exemplified by this statement has made the mechanical application of legal formulas no longer feasible. Once an economic measure of the reach of the power granted to Congress in the Commerce Clause is accepted, questions of federal power cannot be decided simply by finding the activity in question to be ‘production’ nor can consideration of its economic effects be foreclosed by calling them ‘indirect.’ . . .

The maintenance by government regulation of a price for wheat undoubtedly can be accomplished as effectively by sustaining or increasing the demand as by limiting the supply. The effect of the statute before us is to restrict the amount which may be produced for market and the extent as well to which one may forestall resort to the market by producing to meet his own needs. That [Filburn’s] own contribution to the demand for wheat may be trivial by itself is not enough to remove him from the scope of federal regulation where, as here, his contribution, taken together with that of many others similarly situated, is far from trivial.

It is well established by decisions of this Court that the power to regulate commerce includes the power to regulate the prices at which commodities in that commerce are dealt in and practices affecting such prices. One of the primary purposes of the Act in question was to increase the market price of wheat and to that end to limit the volume thereof that could affect the market. It can hardly be denied that a factor of such volume and variability as home-consumed wheat would have a substantial influence on price and market conditions.

[I]f we assume that [a farmer’s wheat] is never marketed, it supplies a need of the man who grew it which would otherwise be reflected by purchases in the open market. Home-grown wheat in this sense competes with wheat in commerce. . . . This record leaves us in no doubt that Congress may properly have considered that wheat consumed on the farm where grown if wholly outside the scheme of regulation would have a substantial effect in defeating and obstructing its purpose to stimulate trade therein at increased prices.

It is said, however, that this Act, forcing some farmers into the market to buy what they could provide for themselves, is an unfair promotion of the markets and prices of specializing wheat growers. It is of the essence of regulation that it lays a restraining hand on the self-interest of the regulated and that advantages from the regulation commonly fall to others. The conflicts of economic interest between the regulated and those who advantage by it are wisely left under our system to resolution by the Congress under its more flexible and responsible legislative process. Such conflicts rarely lend themselves to judicial determination. And with the wisdom, workability, or fairness, of the plan of regulation we have nothing to do. . . .