Module 34: The Twenty-First Amendment

From Dry Decade to Repeal: How Prohibition Ended

The Eighteenth Amendment was passed by Congress on December 18, 1917, and ratified on January 16, 1919. Its first section barred "the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States" for beverage purposes, to take effect after one year.¹ Prohibition began on January 17, 1920, and lasted almost fourteen years.² (Module 31, The Eighteenth Amendment, tells how it was adopted. This lesson picks up at its end.)

The Eighteenth Amendment ended with the Twenty-First Amendment on December 5, 1933. It remains the only amendment ever repealed by another amendment.³ The repeal came out of a record of enforcement failure and a presidential election, and it was ratified by a method that bypassed state legislatures.

What the enforcement record showed

The Constitution Annotated describes the Eighteenth Amendment and its enforcing law, the Volstead Act, as controversial from the start in part because they gave the federal government a police role over "individual social habits and morality," a role that had belonged to state and local governments. By the end of the 1920s the amendment had failed to eliminate the illegal manufacture and sale of liquor.⁴

President Herbert Hoover took office in 1929 and set up a commission to study the obstacles to enforcement. Its 1931 report is known as the Wickersham Report, after its chair, former Attorney General George W. Wickersham. The commission found that drinking and deaths from alcoholism initially declined, but "after a brief period in the first years of the amendment," drinking increased. Its authors wrote that "[s]ettled habits and social customs do not yield readily to legislative fiats," and it recorded wide public defiance, most of all in large cities, through speakeasies, loopholes for medicinal liquor and sacramental wine, and home brewing.⁴

Enforcement itself was weak. Federal agencies lacked money. The Constitution Annotated quotes Daniel Okrent's figure that the total initial appropriation for federal enforcement, $2.1 million, was "slightly less than the amount paid in one day . . . for muskrat pelts at the St. Louis fur auction." Many federal agents were poorly paid and poorly trained, and some took bribes. Fewer than half the States funded enforcement of their own, although the amendment gave the States "concurrent power" to enforce it.⁴ Harsh tactics such as violent raids and wiretaps also cost the policy support. Organized gangs fought turf battles over the illicit trade in Chicago, Detroit and other cities.⁴

The Wickersham Commission itself did not call for repeal. The Constitution Annotated reports that it opposed repealing the Eighteenth Amendment and opposed relaxing the Volstead Act, although a few commissioners wrote separate statements for revision or repeal, among them Ada L. Comstock for revision and Newton D. Baker for repeal.⁴ The report documented the failures. Its authors did not draw the conclusion that repeal followed.

The repeal movement and the 1932 election

Groups such as the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment and the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform pressed for repeal. Their arguments were that Prohibition intruded on individual liberty, interfered with state sovereignty and fed crime. Business figures joined in, among them the newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst and the philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, Jr., a longtime supporter of the Anti-Saloon League who wrote in June 1932 that Prohibition's benefits were "more than outweighed by the evils that have developed and flourished since its adoption."⁵

The 1928 Democratic nominee, New York Governor Al Smith, was the first major party candidate to support repeal, and he lost to Hoover.⁵ In 1932 the two parties took different positions. The Republican platform opposed repeal while supporting a new amendment that would let each State decide whether to prohibit liquor or saloons within its borders, an attempt to satisfy both dry and wet voters. Franklin Roosevelt openly supported repeal. In a campaign address at Sea Girt, New Jersey, on August 27, 1932, he called Prohibition a "complete and tragic failure" in many parts of the country and argued that States should take primary authority over alcohol, with federal law protecting dry States from illegal imports. He also argued that repeal would produce tax revenue, in the middle of the Depression.⁵ He won in a landslide on November 8, 1932.⁵

The Constitution Annotated notes that both major parties had supported submitting some amendment to the States in 1932. That fact mattered in the Senate debate that followed, when Senator John J. Blaine, who managed the resolution, reminded opponents that the voters had been offered a choice between revising and repealing.⁶

The Text, Section by Section

The Twenty-First Amendment has three sections. The National Archives dates it: "Passed by Congress February 20, 1933. Ratified December 5, 1933."¹

"Section 1. The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed."

"Section 2. The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited."

"Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress."

U.S. Const. amend. XXI (National Archives transcription)

Section 1 is the shortest repeal clause in the document. Section 2 is the one that has produced almost all the case law. Section 3 is unique: it is the only place in the Constitution where Congress chose ratification by state conventions instead of state legislatures.⁷

The wording of Section 2 repays a close reading. It does not say that States may regulate alcohol. It says that transportation or importation into a State "for delivery or use therein" in violation of that State's laws "is hereby prohibited." The prohibition runs against the shipper, and the measure is "the laws thereof," meaning whatever the receiving State has enacted. The Constitution Annotated's account of the drafting history shows that the members of Congress who voted for it did not agree on how much that language gave the States, a disagreement that the Supreme Court later took up.⁶

Drafting in the Lame Duck Congress

The amendment was written by a Congress that had already been defeated. The 72nd Congress, elected in 1930, met in its short session after the November 1932 election, and the Twentieth Amendment (Module 33, The Twentieth Amendment) had not yet taken effect, so this Congress would sit until March 1933.⁶ The wet victories of the November election gave it both motive and cover.

The December 1932 attempts

On December 5, 1932, a joint resolution to repeal the Eighteenth Amendment was introduced in the House as H.J. Res. 480, and the House narrowly rejected it the same day. Some Members said they would vote no on procedural grounds because the measure had been brought up under suspension of the rules, with no amendments allowed and little debate.⁶ On December 6, Senator Blaine of Wisconsin introduced S.J. Res. 211, the resolution that, as changed, would become the Twenty-First Amendment.⁶

As Blaine first wrote it, the resolution did not clearly repeal the Eighteenth Amendment. It barred Congress from authorizing the transportation or importation of intoxicating liquors into dry States in violation of state law, and it permitted federal legislation to help States enforce their prohibition laws.⁶ The Senate Judiciary Committee rewrote it in a January 1933 markup. The reported version expressly repealed the Eighteenth Amendment and protected dry States from illegal imports, and it set a seven-year ratification limit.⁶

The section that was removed

The committee version had a third section giving Congress "concurrent power" to "regulate or prohibit the sale of intoxicating liquors" for consumption on the premises. It was meant to keep the licensed saloon from returning. The Senate struck it after some Senators argued that it would defeat the point of repeal by giving the federal government a general police power to impose a "single standard of conduct . . . without regard to local sentiment and local habits."⁶ By removing the federal power, Congress left saloon control to the States.

Opponents of repeal in the Senate argued that it would permit licensed saloons and their social costs. The Constitution Annotated cites Senators Robinson and Glass among them. Blaine answered that both parties had backed an amendment. He described the Eighteenth Amendment as an "inflexible police regulation which might be appropriate in a municipal ordinance."⁶

What Section 2 was supposed to do

The accounts of Section 2's purpose were not consistent. Blaine said it would "restor[e] to the States" the powers over alcohol that they had held in the nation's early years, and that it would "assure the so-called dry States against the importation of intoxicating liquor into those States [by writing] permanently into the Constitution a prohibition along that line." Other Members agreed that it protected dry States from imports that a future Congress or Court might otherwise allow. Senator Borah said it would incorporate the Webb-Kenyon Act "permanently in the Constitution," and Senator Fess said the section was "designed to permit the Federal authority to assist the States that want to be dry to remain dry."⁶

A few remarks went further. Blaine also said Section 2 was meant "to restore to the States by constitutional amendment absolute control in effect over interstate commerce affecting intoxicating liquors which enter the confines of the States," and Senator Swanson said "it is left entirely to the States to determine in what manner intoxicating liquors shall be sold or used."⁶ The Constitution Annotated says it is unclear whether those brief remarks reflected the real views of their speakers. The Supreme Court wrote in 1984 that Blaine's apparently incompatible statements showed the "obscurity" of the intended scope of Section 2, and in 2019 it stressed that the framers did not intend to let States discriminate against imported liquor in favor of local liquor.⁶

The switch to conventions and the votes

During consideration, the Senate changed the method of ratification from state legislatures to specially elected state conventions.⁶ The Senate agreed to the amended resolution on February 16, 1933, by a vote of 63 to 23. The House passed it four days later, under suspension of the rules, by 289 to 121. Proponents in the House argued that repeal would raise revenue, respect each State's authority and end the illicit traffic. Opponents argued it would bring back the licensed saloon. Congress submitted the amendment to the States on February 20, 1933.⁶

Congress did not wait for ratification to loosen the law. On March 22, 1933, it enacted the Cullen-Harrison Act, which legalized beer and light wines up to 3.2 percent alcohol by weight, except where state law prohibited them, effective April 7, 1933.⁶

Ratification by State Conventions

Article V gives Congress a choice of how an amendment is ratified: by the legislatures of three-fourths of the States, or by conventions in three-fourths of them. Congress has chosen conventions only once, for the Twenty-First Amendment. For the other twenty-six amendments it chose legislatures.⁷

Why Congress chose conventions

The Constitution Annotated gives two reasons. At the time, many politicians believed that only state ratifying conventions should ratify amendments that touched individual rights and morals. And Congress may have wanted to get around the temperance lobby, which remained powerful in state legislatures.⁷ Robert P. George and David A. J. Richards, writing for the National Constitution Center, put the second reason bluntly: prohibition had lost popular support, but the temperance lobby's political power was intact in many States, so "political prudence pointed in the direction of ratifying conventions as a way of leaving gun-shy legislators with their eyes on re-election out of the process and 'off the hook.'"³

A 1930 letter from the Women's Committee for Repeal of the 18th Amendment shows the idea was in circulation before the Senate acted. The committee urged submission to state conventions and noted that delegates would not be "running for a political office" and would have "no political axe to grind."⁶

How the conventions worked

Neither the Constitution nor Supreme Court precedent says how States should call ratifying conventions, choose delegates or run the proceedings. The thirty-eight state conventions that considered the Twenty-First Amendment in 1933 followed a variety of procedures. Most delegates had pledged to vote for repeal, and they spent little time debating a question that voters had already settled.⁷²

The records that survive show what delegates thought they were doing. The president of the Connecticut convention, Robinson, said that the fight had been "for the return to the peoples of the several states of their constitutional right to govern themselves in their internal affairs." A delegate named Simmons told the Kentucky convention that "[t]he regulation of the sale of liquor is a state concern."²

The Idaho convention was one of them, and the Idaho section below tells how its delegates were chosen and when they met.

The count

A table of State dates compiled on the website of a prohibition history group, which this lesson used as a secondary source, lists the dates of action for each State. By that list Michigan acted first, on April 10, 1933, followed by Wisconsin on April 25 and Rhode Island on May 8. The list shows thirty-seven States ratifying in all. South Carolina rejected the amendment, North Carolina refused to call a convention, and nine States took no action. The thirty-six needed were reached on December 5, 1933, when Ohio, Pennsylvania and Utah acted on the same day, with Utah the 36th. Montana ratified later, on August 8, 1934 by that list.⁸⁹ (The House Manual's official table of ratification dates, compiled by the House of Representatives, differs in two details: it gives Montana's date as August 6, 1934, and it also lists Maine as ratifying on December 6, 1933, which would make thirty-eight in all.) (The count of thirty-seven is this lesson's tally of the dated entries in that list, and the order within December 5 comes from the Boise State Public Radio account naming Utah the 36th.)

The speed of the process was unusual. Congress proposed the amendment on February 20, 1933, and the thirty-sixth convention acted in less than a year.² Acting Secretary of State William Phillips certified on December 5, 1933, that the amendment had been adopted. President Roosevelt proclaimed the end of national Prohibition the same day and urged Americans "that no State shall by law or otherwise authorize the return of the saloon either in its old form or in some modern guise."²

The seven-year clause

Section 3 repeated the seven-year ratification limit that Congress had used in the Eighteenth and Twentieth Amendments. The Twenty-First needed less than one year of it.¹²

What Repeal Did and Did Not Do

The Supreme Court settled the effect of repeal quickly. In United States v. Chambers, 291 U.S. 217 (1934), it held that ratification of the Twenty-First Amendment immediately made the Eighteenth Amendment inoperative, so that "neither the Congress nor the courts could give it continued vitality." The Twenty-First, the Court added, "contained no saving clause as to prosecutions for offenses [committed before its adoption]." Pending Volstead Act prosecutions had to be dismissed. The Court later held that repeal removed Congress's power to punish violations of state liquor laws in United States v. Constantine, 296 U.S. 287 (1935), and Congress repealed Titles I and II of the Volstead Act in the Liquor Law Repeal and Enforcement Act of 1935.¹⁰

Repeal did not erase every liability tied to liquor. The Court held that federal taxes on alcohol survived unless they were penalties for violating liquor laws, and that an owner of a vessel seized for smuggling remained liable on a bond.¹⁰

The States took back the main role. A few banned or sharply restricted liquor statewide until the mid-twentieth century, and some dry counties still prohibit it. Nearly all the States that permitted sale adopted a three-tier distribution system: "[p]roducers may sell only to licensed wholesalers; wholesalers may sell only to licensed retailers or other wholesalers; and only licensed retailers may sell to consumers." Some States made a state agency the monopoly seller of some alcoholic beverages for off-premises consumption.² The prohibition history table notes that eighteen States kept their own prohibitory laws after repeal, the last of them, according to other accounts Mississippi, going wet in 1966, and that more than half the States adopted "local option" laws.⁸

The federal government kept regulating too. It continued to tax alcohol and to regulate production, wholesale distribution, importation, labeling and advertising. The Constitution Annotated lists the federal taxes in 26 U.S.C. chapter 51 and the permit and labeling rules of the Federal Alcohol Administration Act, 27 U.S.C. sections 201 to 212.²

Section 2: What the Words Meant Before 1919

The key to Section 2 is that the people who wrote it were thinking about a pre-Prohibition fight over interstate liquor shipments. The Supreme Court's syllabus in Granholm v. Heald (2005) tells the story.

Before the Eighteenth Amendment, States could ban the production of liquor at home. Mugler v. Kansas, 123 U.S. 623 (1887), upheld that power. But a State could not stop imported liquor in its original package, under Leisy v. Hardin, 135 U.S. 100 (1890), and the Court had also struck down state laws that discriminated against imported liquor, as in Scott v. Donald, 165 U.S. 58 (1897), and neutral-looking laws that burdened interstate commerce, as in Bowman v. Chicago & Northwestern Railway, 125 U.S. 465 (1888). Dry States therefore could not keep out liquor shipped from wet ones.¹¹

Congress responded twice. The Wilson Act, passed in August 1890, let States regulate imported liquor on the same terms as domestic liquor. When the Court read that Act to reach resale but not direct shipment to consumers, in Rhodes v. Iowa, 170 U.S. 412 (1898), Congress passed the Webb-Kenyon Act in 1913, over a presidential veto, to close the direct-shipment gap, and the Court upheld it in Clark Distilling Co. v. Western Maryland Railway, 242 U.S. 311 (1917).¹¹

Section 2 of the Twenty-First Amendment, the Court said in Granholm, was meant to continue that framework in permanent form. Justice Kennedy's opinion for the Court read the amendment as "constitutionalizing the Commerce Clause framework established under those statutes."¹² The framework let States control the transportation, importation and use of liquor, but it did not let them discriminate in favor of their own producers, because the Wilson Act "expressly precludes States from discriminating."¹¹ The Constitution Annotated agrees with the Court's account, and it points to Senator Blaine's statements as proof that the drafters did not agree on how much the language gave the States.⁶

The Early Cases: Section 2 as a Trump Card

For about fifty years after repeal, the Supreme Court read Section 2 broadly. The Constitution Annotated traces the arc. Early decisions held that the States could discriminate against imported liquor without violating the Commerce Clause.¹³

The 1930s decisions

State Board of Equalization v. Young's Market Co., 299 U.S. 59 (1936), upheld a California license fee on wholesale importers of beer. The Court said that Section 2 authorized each State "to forbid all importations which do not comply with the conditions which it prescribes," and it rejected the argument that a State "must let imported liquors compete with the domestic on equal terms." In 1939 the Court went further in three cases. It upheld a Missouri law that barred state licensees from dealing in liquor made in States that discriminated against Missouri liquor, in Joseph S. Finch & Co. v. McKittrick, 305 U.S. 395 (1939). It upheld a Michigan retaliation law in Indianapolis Brewing Co. v. Liquor Control Commission, 305 U.S. 391 (1939), writing that after the Twenty-First Amendment, "the right of a state to prohibit or regulate the importation of intoxicating liquor [was] not limited by the Commerce Clause." And in Ziffrin, Inc. v. Reeves, 308 U.S. 132 (1939), it wrote that "[t]he Twenty-first Amendment sanctions the right of a State to legislate concerning intoxicating liquors brought from without, unfettered by the Commerce Clause."¹³

The reasoning was that a State with the power to ban all imports could impose lesser burdens. The Constitution Annotated notes that the discrimination language in Young's Market could be treated as dicta, because the California fee also burdened domestic manufacturers, and the Court itself said "the case does not present a question of discrimination prohibited by the commerce clause."¹³

Federal enclaves

The Court drew an early line in Collins v. Yosemite Park & Curry Co., 304 U.S. 518 (1938). California tried to regulate liquor imported for sale in Yosemite, where the United States held exclusive jurisdiction. Section 2 speaks of liquor imported "for delivery or use therein," and the Court held that liquor delivered to a federal park was not within the State's power under it. California could still tax the contractor's sales, because it had reserved that power when it ceded the land.¹⁴ Later cases followed: a State could not tax wholesale liquor purchases for military bases under exclusive federal jurisdiction, but it could regulate liquor shipped in to prevent diversion into the local market, as in North Dakota v. United States, 495 U.S. 423 (1990), where a plurality upheld labeling and reporting rules for liquor supplied to Air Force bases.¹⁴

The retreat

By the 1960s the Court had abandoned the idea that the Twenty-First Amendment "repealed" the commerce power over liquor. Hostetter v. Idlewild Bon Voyage Liquor Corp., 377 U.S. 324 (1964), held that New York could not bar the delivery of liquor to a duty-free shop at Kennedy Airport for passengers leaving the country. The Court wrote that "[b]oth the Twenty-First Amendment and the Commerce Clause are parts of the same Constitution," and that each "must be considered in the light of the other, and in the context of the issues and interests at stake in any concrete case."¹³¹⁵ In 1980 the Court said in California Retail Liquor Dealers Association v. Midcal Aluminum, 445 U.S. 97 (1980), that "there is no bright line between federal and state powers over liquor."¹⁵

The 1980s brought the turn. In Bacchus Imports, Ltd. v. Dias, 468 U.S. 263 (1984), the Court struck down a twenty percent Hawaii excise tax on wholesale liquor that exempted two locally produced drinks, okolehao, a brandy from the root of the ti plant, and fruit wine. The tax aimed to protect local industry, not to "combat the perceived evils of an unrestricted traffic in liquor," and the Court wrote that "[i]t is by now clear that the [Twenty-First] Amendment did not entirely remove state regulation of alcoholic beverages from the ambit of the Commerce Clause."¹⁶ Two later cases struck down price-affirmation laws that tied in-state prices to out-of-state prices: Brown-Forman Distillers Corp. v. New York State Liquor Authority, 476 U.S. 573 (1986), and Healy v. Beer Institute, 491 U.S. 324 (1989).¹⁶ A 2023 decision, National Pork Producers Council v. Ross, later limited the rule against extraterritorial state laws to price-control and price-affirmation statutes of that kind.¹⁶

Granholm, Tennessee Wine and the Modern Rule

The Court settled the modern rule in two cases fourteen years apart.

Granholm v. Heald (2005)

Michigan and New York each ran a three-tier system, with separate licenses for producers, wholesalers and retailers. Both let in-state wineries ship directly to consumers and kept out-of-state wineries from doing so. Michigan required out-of-state wineries, even licensed ones, to go through a wholesaler and a retailer. New York required them to open a New York branch office and warehouse and denied them the "farm winery" license that made direct shipping easiest.¹¹

The Court held, 5 to 4, that both schemes violated the Commerce Clause and were "neither authorized nor permitted by the Twenty-first Amendment." Justice Kennedy wrote the opinion, joined by Justices Scalia, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer. Justice Stevens dissented, joined by Justice O'Connor, and Justice Thomas dissented, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices Stevens and O'Connor.¹¹ The decision, argued on December 7, 2004, came down on May 16, 2005.¹¹

The majority gave the States wide room within limits. It confirmed that "States can mandate a three-tier distribution scheme in the exercise of their authority under the Twenty-first Amendment." But a discriminatory scheme within that system can stand only if the State "advances a legitimate local purpose that cannot be adequately served by reasonable nondiscriminatory alternatives," the same test used outside the alcohol field. The States offered two purposes, keeping alcohol from minors and collecting taxes, and the Court found too little evidence that banning out-of-state direct shipments served either.¹²

Tennessee Wine and Spirits Retailers Association v. Thomas (2019)

Tennessee issued retail liquor licenses only to people who had lived in the State for the previous two years. The trade association defending the law argued that Granholm reached only discrimination against out-of-state products and producers, and not the licensing of local stores. The Court, 7 to 2, disagreed and held, in a decision of June 26, 2019, that the residency requirement "violate[s] the Commerce Clause and is not saved by the Twenty-First Amendment." Justice Alito wrote that the amendment "allows each State leeway to enact the measures that its citizens believe are appropriate to address the public health and safety effects of alcohol use and to serve other legitimate interests, but it does not license the States to adopt protectionist measures with no demonstrable connection to those interests." Justice Gorsuch dissented, joined by Justice Thomas, arguing that "States may impose residency requirements on those who seek to sell alcohol within their borders to ensure that retailers comply with local laws and norms."¹⁷

The Constitution Annotated adds the reasoning. The Court called the association's reading of Section 2 "implausible," because Section 2 speaks of importation, yet even importation laws are not shielded from the Dormant Commerce Clause. It would be odd, the Court said, for the provision to protect other kinds of discriminatory regulation. The law's "predominant effect" was protectionism, with "at best a highly attenuated relationship to public health or safety," and there was no "concrete evidence" that a two-year residency requirement promoted either. The Court also refused to treat a law as valid merely because it, or a similar law, predated Prohibition. Laws "never tested" before 1919 may always have been invalid.¹²

The current dispute: physical presence requirements

After Tennessee Wine, the live question is whether a State may require a retailer to have a physical presence inside the State as a feature of its three-tier system. The petitioners in Day v. Henry framed the question as "[w]hether a physical-presence requirement that discriminates between in-state and out-of-state alcohol retailers can be deemed constitutional under the 21st Amendment solely as an essential feature of a state's three-tier system of alcohol distribution, without concrete evidence establishing that the requirement predominantly promotes a legitimate, nonprotectionist interest such as public health or safety."¹⁸

On May 18, 2026, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in Day v. Henry, No. 25-788, a Ninth Circuit case from Arizona. It also denied the petition in an Indiana case from the Seventh Circuit, Chicago Wine Co. v. Braun.¹⁸¹⁹ A denial of certiorari is not a ruling on the merits. A commentary site that follows alcohol law, which argues for the States' side, reports that similar retailer challenges had failed in the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth (Michigan) and Eighth Circuits.²⁰

A Sixth Circuit panel then ruled the other way in a case from Ohio, in early May 2026 (the Ohio Attorney General's petition gives May 6 for the judgment, and a law firm summary gives May 7). The panel struck down Ohio's ban on out-of-state retailers shipping wine directly to Ohio consumers under the Dormant Commerce Clause. The law firm summary reports that the panel called Ohio's three-tier defense "illusory," because Ohio allows several other out-of-state shipping channels, and that it faulted Ohio for offering no record evidence for its public health rationales and for not considering nondiscriminatory alternatives.¹⁹²¹ The Ohio Attorney General petitioned for certiorari on June 5, 2026 (No. 25-1366). The Court's docket shows the petition was distributed for the conference of October 9, 2026, and denied on October 13, 2026.²²

The Ohio denial leaves the Sixth Circuit's ruling in place there. It also leaves a difference among the circuits' results that the Supreme Court has now declined to resolve in three petitions. This lesson did not read the Sixth Circuit's opinion, and the description of its reasoning comes from the law firm summary. The state of the law in the other circuits comes from a commentary site, and a reader should check the opinions themselves.

Alcohol and Individual Rights: Where Section 2 Stops

Section 2 gives the States power over alcohol, not immunity from the rest of the Constitution. The Constitution Annotated puts the rule this way: the Twenty-First Amendment "does not license the States to ignore their obligations under other provisions of the Constitution," a sentence it quotes from Capital Cities Cable v. Crisp, 467 U.S. 691 (1984).¹⁶ The cases fall into three groups.

Speech and religion

For a time the Court let States use their liquor-licensing power to ban entertainment that the First Amendment might otherwise protect. In California v. LaRue, 409 U.S. 109 (1972), it upheld California rules that barred a list of sexual performances in establishments licensed to sell liquor by the drink, and it suggested that such rules were entitled to a presumption of validity under the Twenty-First Amendment. Later decisions upheld local bans on nude dancing in bars, including New York State Liquor Authority v. Bellanca, 452 U.S. 714 (1981), and Newport v. Iacobucci, 479 U.S. 92 (1986).²³

That line ended in 1996. In 44 Liquormart, Inc. v. Rhode Island, 517 U.S. 484 (1996), the Court held that the Twenty-First Amendment "does not qualify the constitutional prohibition against laws abridging the freedom of speech embodied in the First Amendment." It struck down Rhode Island laws that completely barred public dissemination of accurate information about retail liquor prices, writing that the State had "failed to carry its heavy burden of justifying its complete ban on price advertising." The decision overruled LaRue and Bellanca in part. The Court left room for States to use their general police power to "prohibit the sale of alcoholic beverages in inappropriate locations," even if that incidentally burdens some expression.²³

The Establishment Clause applies as well. Larkin v. Grendel's Den, 459 U.S. 116 (1982), struck down a Massachusetts law that gave churches and schools the power to veto liquor license applications within 500 feet. The Court said the law had the effect of advancing religion and entangled churches in "substantial governmental powers." The Constitution Annotated adds that the Court has since abandoned the Lemon test on which Larkin relied, and it is unclear whether that would change the result.²³

Due process and equal protection

In Wisconsin v. Constantineau, 400 U.S. 433 (1971), a police chief posted notices in the town's liquor stores forbidding sales or gifts of liquor to a named adult resident for a year. The Court struck down the Wisconsin statute for lack of notice and an impartial hearing, and it held that neither the Twenty-First Amendment nor the State's police power excused the omission.²⁴

In Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S. 190 (1976), Oklahoma allowed women to buy low-alcohol beer at eighteen and men at twenty-one. The Court held that the difference denied equal protection to men aged 18 to 20 and that "the operation of the Twenty-first Amendment does not alter the application of equal protection standards that otherwise govern this case." The decision overruled Goesaert v. Cleary, 335 U.S. 464 (1948), which had cited the Twenty-First Amendment in upholding a Michigan law that barred women from bartending unless they were the wife or daughter of a male owner. The Court wrote in Craig that neither the text nor the history of the amendment "suggests that it qualifies individual rights protected by the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment where the sale or use of liquor is concerned."²⁴

Earlier cases had held that the Equal Protection Clause did not stop States from favoring in-state liquor, including Mahoney v. Joseph Triner Corp., 304 U.S. 401 (1938), and Young's Market. The Constitution Annotated says it is unclear whether those rulings reflect current law, citing Craig's description of them as dicta. Since then the Court has treated discrimination against out-of-state economic interests as a Dormant Commerce Clause problem.²⁴

Federal Power Over Alcohol

The Twenty-First Amendment did not take alcohol out of federal reach. The Constitution Annotated reports that the amendment "did not completely oust Congress's Commerce Clause power" over the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcoholic beverages, and it lists the federal laws that still apply: the federal alcohol excise taxes in 26 U.S.C. chapter 51, the Federal Alcohol Administration Act's permit and labeling rules, and the Sherman Act.¹⁵

Federal law can also override a conflicting state liquor law under the Supremacy Clause. In Capital Cities Cable the Court held that FCC rules preempted Oklahoma statutes that stopped cable operators from retransmitting out-of-state alcohol advertisements. The Court wrote that when a State "has not attempted directly to regulate the sale or use of liquor within its borders," which the Court called the core Section 2 power, "a conflicting exercise of federal authority may prevail," and that the State's temperance interest was weak, in part because Oklahoma allowed beer ads in print and on broadcast.¹⁵ The Sherman Act has preempted state price rules too. Midcal struck down California's wine resale price maintenance scheme, and 324 Liquor Corp. v. Duffy, 479 U.S. 335 (1987), struck down a New York law requiring retailers to charge at least 112 percent of the posted wholesale price.¹⁵

The drinking age and South Dakota v. Dole

In 1984 Congress enacted the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, which cut a share of a State's federal highway funds unless the State set its drinking age at twenty-one. South Dakota, which let nineteen-year-olds buy beer up to 3.2 percent alcohol, sued. In South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203 (1987), decided June 23, 1987, the Court upheld the Act, 7 to 2, as an exercise of the spending power.²⁵¹⁷

Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote that the Act was "relatively mild encouragement" to the States, because Congress was acting only "indirectly under its spending power to encourage uniformity in the States' drinking ages." The penalty was five percent of certain highway funds. Chief Justice Roberts later noted in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius that the sum was "less than half of one percent of South Dakota's budget at the time."²⁶ The Court declined to decide whether the Twenty-First Amendment would have barred Congress from setting a national drinking age directly. Justices Brennan and O'Connor dissented, each concluding that the Act was "an attempt to regulate the sale of liquor" and so violated the amendment.²⁶¹⁷

A 1984 opinion of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel took the view that Congress's commerce power would permit a federal law prohibiting the sale of alcohol in interstate commerce to persons under twenty-one, and that such a law would not violate the Twenty-First Amendment.²⁶ Congress has not tested that view.

A federal ban on home distilling

One further federal alcohol question is pending as this lesson is written, and it does not turn on the Twenty-First Amendment. SCOTUSblog reported in August 2026 that two petitions asked the Court to review a federal law from 1868 that bars at-home production of distilled spirits. The Sixth Circuit upheld the ban under the Necessary and Proper Clause, while the Fifth Circuit struck it down in a very similar case, and the federal government asked the Court to resolve the split.¹⁷ The Court's docket for one of them, Ream v. Department of the Treasury, No. 26-93, shows the petition distributed for the conference of October 16, 2026, with no order entered as of the docket page this lesson read.²⁷ Readers should check what the Court did.

Three Tiers, Control States and Dry Counties

The Twenty-First Amendment left a patchwork. In Granholm the Court wrote that States "may also assume direct control of liquor distribution through state-run outlets or funnel sales through the three-tier system," and it repeated that "the three-tier system itself is 'unquestionably legitimate,'" a phrase it took from North Dakota v. United States.¹¹ The Constitution Annotated notes that nearly all the States that allowed sales adopted a three-tier system, and that some gave an administrative agency a monopoly over retailing or wholesaling some alcoholic beverages sold for off-premises consumption.² Idaho is among the States that run part of the trade directly, as the Idaho section below shows.

Local option has produced a map in which a county may be dry while its neighbor is wet. The Boise State Public Radio history of Idaho's alcohol laws offers an example: Madison County, in eastern Idaho, offers no liquor by the drink, and the director of the Idaho State Liquor Division said "that's again, up to the sensibility of their citizens."²⁸ The prohibition history table says that hundreds of municipalities remain dry by vote of their residents.⁸

The point of the Section 2 cases is narrower than the headline "States control alcohol." States control how alcohol is licensed, taxed, priced and sold within their borders. They may not use that power to favor their own producers and retailers against out-of-state ones without proof of a public health or safety purpose, and they may not use it to override the First or Fourteenth Amendments.¹²¹⁶

Myths and Misreadings

Questions Students Ask

Is the Twenty-First the only amendment that repealed another?

Yes. The National Constitution Center says it is "the only one that repeals a previous amendment," and the only one ratified by state conventions instead of legislatures.³

Can a State still ban alcohol entirely?

The Constitution Annotated says that a few States did so until the mid-twentieth century and that some dry counties continue. The Supreme Court has also described the States' power to ban domestic liquor production going back to Mugler v. Kansas (1887).²¹¹ The limits found in modern cases are about discrimination, speech and equal treatment, and none of them forbids a State from choosing to be dry on even terms.

Can a State let its own wineries ship to customers and block everyone else's?

No. That was the rule struck down in Granholm.¹¹

Why does the state liquor monopoly survive?

Because Section 2 and the cases treat the choice between state-run outlets and a licensed private system as the State's to make. Granholm says States "may also assume direct control of liquor distribution through state-run outlets or funnel sales through the three-tier system."¹¹ A State that runs the store does not by that fact discriminate against out-of-state producers, though it may not treat them worse than local ones.

What does "intoxicating liquors" cover?

The amendment does not define it. This lesson did not research how courts have read the phrase beyond the alcoholic beverage cases cited here, and a reader with a question about a specific product should check current state law.

Landmark Cases

Each case below is described from the Constitution Annotated, the Supreme Court's own syllabus where this lesson opened it, or SCOTUSblog, as the footnotes show. The cases are listed in date order.

The Idaho Connection

Idaho and Prohibition

Idaho went dry before the nation did. A Gem County Museum history says the Idaho Legislature passed a statutory prohibition law in February 1915, effective January 1, 1916, and that voters approved a constitutional amendment on November 7, 1916, "by about three to one," effective May 1, 1917.²⁹ A curator of the Idaho Historical Museum told Boise State Public Radio in 2018 that the 1917 amendment "passed by 71 percent."²⁸ The two figures differ slightly, and this lesson did not locate the official canvass. Governor Moses Alexander ran on a prohibition platform and signed Idaho's approval of the Eighteenth Amendment on January 8, 1919, the date a prohibition history table also gives for the Legislature's ratification.²⁹⁸

Idaho ratified repeal on October 17, 1933

Idaho ratified the Twenty-First Amendment through a state convention. A Cascade News article of September 22, 1933, preserved in the University of Idaho Library's digital collections, reports that voters chose 21 delegates in an election "Tuesday" (September 19) and that the delegates would meet in convention at Boise on October 17 to vote formally on ratification. The text available to this lesson is an imperfect scan of a local weekly. It reports the delegates were pledged to ratify and gives "a margin of approximately 14,000 votes" out of about 90,000 cast, but the figures are hard to read in the scan, and this lesson treats them as approximate. The article said Idaho was the "30th state" to vote, meaning the election, a different count from the order of conventions.³⁰

The prohibition history table gives the convention date as October 17, 1933, which agrees with the article.⁸ By the dates on that table Idaho was the 27th State to ratify, after Minnesota (October 10) and before Maryland (October 18).⁸ This lesson could not confirm the convention vote count, which would be in Idaho's 1933 session laws or the convention's own proceedings, and it did not find either online.

Idaho's liquor law after repeal

Idaho chose a hybrid. The Boise State Public Radio history reports that Idaho "repealed prohibition, somewhat reluctantly" and that most of its alcohol law dates from 1935. Beer and wine wholesale and retail are in the private sector, while for distilled spirits "the state retained control over the importation, distribution and retail sale of liquor," and counties can add restrictions.²⁸

The statute that does this is in Title 23 of Idaho Code. Section 23-201 creates a State Liquor Division in the office of the governor, headed by a director whom the governor appoints for three years and may remove at will.³¹ Section 23-203 lists the Division's powers. It may "permit, license, inspect and regulate the manufacture, importation, transportation, storage, sale and delivery of alcoholic liquor," and it may "buy, import, transport, store, sell and deliver alcoholic liquor, wine containing more than sixteen percent (16%) alcohol by volume, table wine . . . that is manufactured in Idaho, and sparkling wine." It runs state liquor stores. Its charge is that it "shall so exercise its powers as to curtail the intemperate use of alcoholic beverages" and "shall not attempt to stimulate the normal demands of temperate consumers thereof, irrespective of the effect on the revenue derived by the state from the resale of intoxicating liquor."³² Both sections were added in 1939.³¹³²

Section 23-217 adds a two percent surcharge to the price of liquor and other merchandise sold by the Division, credited monthly to the drug court, mental health court and family court services fund.³³ Idaho Code section 23-949 makes it unlawful for anyone under twenty-one to sell, serve or dispense beer, wine or liquor, with an exception for employees nineteen or older working where liquor is lawfully present.³⁴

Idaho and Granholm

The direct-shipment rule has an Idaho counterpart. Section 23-1309A of Idaho Code lets a holder of an Idaho winery license, or a person licensed to make wine in another State who obtains a wine direct shipper permit from the Idaho director, "sell and ship up to twenty-four (24) nine-liter cases of wine annually directly to a resident of Idaho, who is at least twenty-one (21) years of age, for the resident's personal use and not for resale." Permit holders pay a $50 annual registration fee if the winery is not already licensed by the director, register for sales, use and excise taxes, and consent to the jurisdiction of the Idaho State Police alcohol beverage control division and the Idaho courts.³⁵ The statute puts in-state and out-of-state wineries on the same footing, which is the equal treatment Granholm requires. This lesson did not read the rest of the section or compare its history with the Idaho litigation, if any, that led to the text.

Idaho cases

This lesson did not find an Idaho appellate decision applying Section 2 of the Twenty-First Amendment, and a final round of searches could not be completed because the search budget ran out. Treat the absence as unconfirmed. The federal cases above govern Idaho as they govern every State, and the Idaho Legislature's own site is the place to check current statutory text.

Where This Shows Up for Officials, Reporters and Citizens

The county or city official asked to tighten alcohol rules

Start with state law. In Idaho the Division licenses and regulates, and counties "can set restrictions on those things as well," as the Division's director described it.²⁸³² A local rule that treats out-of-state sellers worse than local ones raises the problem Tennessee Wine addressed. The Court said such a law must show "concrete evidence" that it promotes public health or safety and that nondiscriminatory alternatives would not do.¹²

The council member who wants a church or school to have a veto

A neighborhood group asks the council to let the church next door veto a bar's license. Larkin v. Grendel's Den struck down a Massachusetts law doing that. The Court said that delegating discretionary licensing power to a church "enmeshe[d] churches in the exercise of substantial governmental powers," and the modern Establishment Clause test has changed since 1982, so an official should treat the point as unsettled in its reasoning and settled in its outcome only until a court says otherwise.²³

The licensing clerk and the residency rule

If an application form or ordinance requires that an owner or manager live in the State or county for a period, Tennessee Wine makes that requirement suspect for retail licenses. The Court struck a two-year state residency rule.¹² A clerk should flag the rule to the office that writes policy instead of enforcing it.

The reporter writing about "the Twenty-First Amendment says"

Three checks help. The amendment does not set the drinking age, as the Dole case shows. Section 2 does not give States unlimited power, as the Granholm and Tennessee Wine cases show. And a denial of certiorari, such as the May and October 2026 denials in the retailer shipping cases, does not decide the merits.²⁶¹⁸²²

The business owner or consumer who wants wine shipped

In Idaho, a resident who is twenty-one or older may receive up to twenty-four nine-liter cases a year from a licensed winery or a permitted out-of-state shipper, for personal use.³⁵

The citizen at a public meeting about a bar or tavern

A neighbor can argue that a tavern should not open near a school. The council may weigh public health and safety, including the inappropriate location of liquor sales. The Court said in 44 Liquormart that States can use their police power to "prohibit the sale of alcoholic beverages in inappropriate locations."²³ What the council may not do is penalize speech protected by the First Amendment because it appears in a bar.

Related Modules

Module 31, The Eighteenth Amendment (what was repealed); Module 33, The Twentieth Amendment (the lame duck Congress that drafted this amendment); Module 6, Amending the Constitution (ratification by conventions); Module 5, Federalism and the States (state police power and preemption); Module 2, Article I: Congress (the commerce and spending powers); Module 7, The First Amendment (44 Liquormart); and Module 28, The Fourteenth Amendment (due process and equal protection).

Sources & Further Reading

Primary Sources

• National Archives, The Constitution: Amendments 11-27 (Amendments XVIII and XXI)
• National Archives, The Constitution of the United States: A Transcription
• Constitution Annotated, Amendment XXI: Drafting
• Constitution Annotated, Amendment XXI: Ratification
• Constitution Annotated, Amendment XXI: The Repeal Movement
• Constitution Annotated, Amendment XXI: Repeal of Prohibition
• Constitution Annotated, Article V: Ratification by Conventions
• Idaho Code section 23-203 (State Liquor Division powers)
• Idaho Code section 23-1309A (direct shipment of wine)

Supreme Court and Federal Opinions

• United States v. Chambers, 291 U.S. 217 (1934)
• Hostetter v. Idlewild Bon Voyage Liquor Corp., 377 U.S. 324 (1964)
• Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S. 190 (1976)
• South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203 (1987)
• 44 Liquormart, Inc. v. Rhode Island, 517 U.S. 484 (1996)
• Granholm v. Heald, 544 U.S. 460 (2005)
• Tennessee Wine and Spirits Retailers Ass'n v. Thomas, 588 U.S. 504 (2019)
• Supreme Court docket, No. 25-1366 (Ohio wine retailer shipping)
• Supreme Court docket, Ream v. Department of the Treasury, No. 26-93

Secondary Sources and Further Reading

• National Constitution Center, Interpretation: The Twenty-First Amendment
• SCOTUSblog, Alcohol at the Supreme Court (Aug. 26, 2026)
• Alcohol Law Review, Two Alcohol Retailer Shipping Cases Seeking Supreme Court Review
• Vicente LLP, Sixth Circuit Strikes Down Ohio Wine Retailer Shipping Ban
• Prohibition history table: State dates of ratification
• Boise State Public Radio, Distilled: A History of Idaho's Alcohol Laws
• Boise State Public Radio, Raise a Glass, Idaho, It's Repeal Day
• Gem County Museum, History of Prohibition
• University of Idaho Library, Cascade News, Sept. 22, 1933

Footnotes

1. National Archives, The Constitution: Amendments 11-27, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/amendments-11-27. Text of the Eighteenth and Twenty-First Amendments, with the dates "Passed by Congress February 20, 1933. Ratified December 5, 1933."
2. Constitution Annotated, Amendment XXI, "Ratification of the Twenty-First Amendment," https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-21/ratification-of-the-twenty-first-amendment. Source for the conventions, the certification of December 5, 1933, United States v. Chambers, and the 1935 repeal of Volstead Act titles.
3. National Constitution Center, Interpretation: The Twenty-First Amendment, https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/amendments/amendment-xxi/interpretations/151.
4. Constitution Annotated, Amendment XXI, "Problems with the Eighteenth Amendment and Prohibition," https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-21/problems-with-the-eighteenth-amendment-and-prohibition. Source for enforcement failure, speakeasies, medicinal and sacramental exceptions, home brewing and the Wickersham Commission.
5. Constitution Annotated, Amendment XXI, "The Repeal Movement and the 1932 Presidential Election," https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-21/the-repeal-movement-and-the-1932-presidential-election. Source for the 1928 and 1932 party positions, the Rockefeller letter of June 1932 and the Sea Girt address.
6. Constitution Annotated, Amendment XXI, "Drafting of the Twenty-First Amendment," https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-21/drafting-of-the-twenty-first-amendment. Source for the December 1932 House vote, the Senate Judiciary Committee rewrite, the Blaine statements, and the votes of 63 to 23 and 289 to 121.
7. Constitution Annotated, Article V, "Ratification by Conventions," https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/article-5/ratification-by-conventions. Source for the single use of the convention method.
8. Prohibition history table, "State Dates - Ratified the 18th & 21st Amendment," https://prohibitionists.org/History/votes/State_Dates-Ratified_18th-%26-21st_Amendment.html. Source for the dated list of state conventions, Idaho on October 17, 1933, Utah the 36th, Montana in 1934, and the eighteen States that kept prohibition. The entry count is this lesson's own tally of that list.
9. Boise State Public Radio, "Raise a Glass, Idaho, It's Repeal Day" (Dec. 5, 2017), https://www.boisestatepublicradio.org/arts-culture/2017-12-05/raise-a-glass-idaho-its-repeal-day. Names Utah as the 36th State.
10. Constitution Annotated, Amendment XXI, "Repeal of Prohibition," https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-21/repeal-of-prohibition. Source for the effect of repeal on pending prosecutions, penalties and bonds.
11. Granholm v. Heald, 544 U.S. 460 (2005), https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/544/460. Source for the history of Mugler, Leisy, the Wilson and Webb-Kenyon Acts, the holding, and the quoted passage on state-run outlets and the three-tier system.
12. Constitution Annotated, Amendment XXI, "Modern Doctrine on State Power over Alcohol and Discrimination against Interstate Commerce," https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-21/modern-doctrine-on-state-power-over-alcohol-and-discrimination-against-interstate-commerce. Source for Bacchus, Granholm and Tennessee Wine.
13. Constitution Annotated, Amendment XXI, "Overview of State Power over Alcohol and Discrimination against Interstate Commerce," https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-21/overview-of-state-power-over-alcohol-and-discrimination-against-interstate-commerce.
14. Constitution Annotated, Amendment XXI, "Regulation of Alcohol Destined for a Federal Area," https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-21/regulation-of-alcohol-destined-for-a-federal-area, and "Imports, Exports, Foreign Commerce and Alcohol," https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-21/imports-exports-foreign-commerce-and-alcohol.
15. Constitution Annotated, Amendment XXI, "State and Federal Regulation of Alcohol Sales," https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-21/state-and-federal-regulation-of-alcohol-sales. Source for Midcal and the "no bright line" statement.
16. Constitution Annotated, Amendment XXI, "Early Doctrine on State Power over Alcohol and Discrimination against Interstate Commerce," https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-21/early-doctrine-on-state-power-over-alcohol-and-discrimination-against-interstate-commerce.
17. Kelsey Dallas, "Alcohol at the Supreme Court," SCOTUSblog (Aug. 26, 2026), https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/08/alcohol-at-the-supreme-court/. Source for the quoted description of Tennessee Wine and for the home distilling petitions.
18. SCOTUSblog case pages for Day v. Henry, No. 25-788, https://www.scotusblog.com/cases/day-v-henry/, and Chicago Wine Co. v. Braun, https://www.scotusblog.com/cases/chicago-wine-co-v-braun/; and the petition in No. 25-788, https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/25/25-788/395556/20260205135405927_Day%20cert-stage.pdf. The opinions of the Ninth Circuit and the Seventh Circuit were not read in full.
19. Vicente LLP, "Sixth Circuit Strikes Down Ohio Wine Retailer Shipping Ban in Block v. Canepa," https://vicentellp.com/insights/sixth-circuit-strikes-down-ohio-wine-retailer-shipping-ban-in-block-v-canepa/. A law firm summary; the Sixth Circuit opinion itself was not opened.
20. Alcohol Law Review, "Two Alcohol Retailer Shipping Cases Seeking Supreme Court Review," https://www.alcohollawreview.com/two-alcohol-retailer-shipping-cases-seeking-supreme-court-review/. A commentary site that argues the States' side; its list of circuits is used as reported and was not checked case by case.
21. Petition for a writ of certiorari, No. 25-1366 (filed June 5, 2026), https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/25/25-1366/412733/20260605132055528_Block%20Cert%20Petition.pdf. The caption in the petition names the Ohio Attorney General; the docket caption differs.
22. Supreme Court docket, No. 25-1366, https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/25-1366.html. Read directly: distributed for the conference of October 9, 2026, and the petition denied October 13, 2026.
23. Constitution Annotated, Amendment XXI, "State Power over Alcohol and First Amendment Free Speech and Religion Clauses," https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-21/state-power-over-alcohol-and-first-amendment-free-speech-and-religion-clauses. Source for 44 Liquormart and Larkin v. Grendel's Den.
24. Constitution Annotated, Amendment XXI, "Alcohol Regulation and the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses," https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-21/alcohol-regulation-and-the-fourteenth-amendment-due-process-and-equal-protection-clauses. Source for Constantineau and Craig v. Boren.
25. South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203 (1987), https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/483/203.
26. Constitution Annotated, Amendment XXI, "State and Federal Regulation of Minimum Drinking Age," https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-21/state-and-federal-regulation-of-minimum-drinking-age. Source for the 1984 Act, the 1987 holding and the quoted budget comparison.
27. Supreme Court docket, Ream v. Department of the Treasury, No. 26-93, https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/26-93.html. Status is as of the docket page this lesson read.
28. Boise State Public Radio, "Distilled: A History of Idaho's Alcohol Laws" (Jan. 22, 2018), https://www.boisestatepublicradio.org/idaho-news/2018-01-22/distilled-a-history-of-idahos-alcohol-laws.
29. Gem County Museum, "History of Prohibition," https://gemcountymuseum.org/history-prohibition.html. A local museum history; the dates are used with that caution.
30. Cascade News, Sept. 22, 1933, University of Idaho Library digital collections, https://lib.uidaho.edu/digital/cccidaho/items/cccidaho1473.html. Read from an imperfect scan; figures are approximate.
31. Idaho Code section 23-201, https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idstat/Title23/T23CH2/SECT23-201/.
32. Idaho Code section 23-203, https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idstat/Title23/T23CH2/SECT23-203/.
33. Idaho Code section 23-217, https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idstat/Title23/T23CH2/SECT23-217/.
34. Idaho Code section 23-949, https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idstat/Title23/T23CH9/SECT23-949/.
35. Idaho Code section 23-1309A, https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idstat/Title23/T23CH13/SECT23-1309A/. Only the portions quoted were read.