National Association of Wine Retailers Note Confusion/Circuit Split in Court Cases on Wine Shipping
Salem, OR (March 5, 2025) – The National Association of Wine Retailers (NAWR) and its members are disappointed with the recent decision of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Day v Henry upholding Arizona’s discriminatory law banning that state’s consumers from receiving wine shipments from out-of-state wine retailers. As a result of this decision a circuit split now exists over how courts determine if a state alcohol law unconstitutionally discriminates against interstate commerce.
While the state of Arizona allows its own wine retailers to ship wine to Arizona residents, it bans the same form of commerce by out-of-state retailers. This ban leaves Arizonans without access to hundreds of thousands of wines available from retailers in other states, reduces the tax coffers of Arizona, and interferes with interstate commerce. With this ruling, Arizona consumers remain stuck with very limited access to rare, collectible, and small-production wines from around the world the state’s retailers can’t obtain from local wholesalers.
“What we have now is a genuine circuit split that should be heard before the Supreme Court of the United States,” noted Tom Wark, executive director of NAWR. “We hope that the high court will once again address the issue of wine shipping, which we believe will lead to an outcome prohibiting discriminatory laws such as Arizona’s “
The Three-Tier System is…Not An End in Itself”
The decision from the 9th Circuit joins previous rulings in the 8th Circuit and the 4th Circuit where the courts determined state laws don’t discriminate when requiring out-of-state retailers to set up brick-and-mortar establishments in the state in order to ship wine to the state’s residents. Meanwhile, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals and the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals determined states must justify such in-state requirements with concrete evidence that discrimination is necessary to advance the health and safety interests of the state.
The 9th Circuit’s decision in Day v Henry ultimately placed the integrity of the archaic “Three-Tier System” above the interests of consumers,” said Wark. “However, NAWR agrees with Judge Danielle J. Forrest who, in her dissent from the majority’s opinion, not only found the Arizona law discriminatory on its face but noted that ‘the three-tier system is ultimately a means to promote the public welfare, not an end in itself.’”
About the National Association of Wine Retailers
The National Association of Wine Retailers is a national trade association representing wine retailers, wine auction houses, Internet retailers, and wine-of-the-month clubs located across the United States. NAWR and its members seek to provide wine retailers with equal access to the U.S. marketplace through legislative efforts, litigation, and work with and educating lawmakers, state regulators, and the trade: https://nawr.org/
