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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 25, 2023

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I’m confused.

  • Texas regulating with whom it will do business—fine. This is normal contractual stuff.
  • Texas regulating businesses entirely within Texas—also fine.
  • Texas regulating businesses outside but selling to Texans—probably fine. Even though it is affecting interstate commerce, it’s only restricting it with regards to its own jurisdiction. Also, I’m pretty sure this is how “dry counties” and similar alcohol laws work. I can see the abuse potential, but…
  • Feds regulating businesses outside Texas, selling to Texans, is obviously fine. Central example of interstate commerce. And my naive assumption is that such regulation supersedes whatever Texas says. Congress should be able to legislate “no state shall forbid such-and-such.” If this isn’t true…then I have no idea how the ATF or FDA are supposed to work

In other words, I feel like Texas is allowed to regulate what products Texans may purchase unless preempted by federal law. I also assume that this has already happened somewhere in the US Code. I recognize that I may be completely off base, especially if this is one of those “gentleman’s agreement” situations we’ve been tearing down, lately. Maybe in five years North Carolina decides to cancel the FDA.

Also, I’m pretty sure this is how “dry counties” and similar alcohol laws work.

Alcohol is generally treated as special because of the powers given by section 2 of the 21st amendment - if a state constitution grants counties the authority to declare themselves dry, that would be a pretty clear application of section 2. But given that SCOTUS has ruled that the dormant commerce clause still applies to alcohol notwithstanding the 21st amendment (e.g. Granholm v. Heald (2005) 544 U.S. 460 and Tennessee Wine and Spirits Retailers Association v. Thomas (2019) 588 U.S. ----) there's probably some wrinkles here that I'm missing.