Sixth Circuit Strikes Tennessee's Discriminatory Retail Alcohol License Law

Steven D. Schwinn, John Marshall Law School

The Sixth Circuit ruled in Byrd v. Tennessee Wine & Spirits Retailers Ass'n that a state law requiring two-year state residency--and ten-year residency for renewal--for a retailer-alcoholic-beverage license violated the Dormant Commerce Clause.

The ruling, with a partial concurrence and partial dissent, further exposes tensions between the Commerce Clause and the Twenty-First Amendment in the Court's treatment of discriminatory state alcohol regulations.

Tennessee's law says that alcohol retailers have to have a license. In order to get one, they have to show that an individual retailer was a state resident for two years, or that a corporate retailer was completely owned by two-year residents. The residency requirement shoots up to ten years for license renewals.

The Sixth Circuit struck the requirements. The court said that the requirements were facially discriminatory against out-of-state economic interests, and that the state failed to show that nondiscriminatory alternative regulations could achieve the state's goals of protecting the health, safety, and welfare of state residents and using a higher level of oversight and control over liquor retailers.

The court noted a split in the circuits as to the interplay between the Commerce Clause and the Twenty-First Amendment under Bacchus Imports v. Dias and Granholm v. Heald. The ruling deepens that split.

Judge Sutton argued in partial dissent that "these modest requirements" were supported by "the text of the Twenty-first Amendment, the original understanding of that provision's relationship to the Commerce Clause, modern U.S. Supreme Court precedent, and a recent Eighth Circuit decision." Judge Sutton agreed with the majority, however, as to the application of the two-year residency requirement to 100% of a retailer's stockholders and as to the ten-year residency requirement for a renewal.