Bill Description: Senate Bill 1258 would allow a subset of distilleries to sell liquor by the drink exclusively from brands it owns.
Rating: -1
NOTE: Idaho's patchwork of liquor licensing laws creates a significant impediment to market entry and unnecessarily limits access to both providers and consumers. The current quota-based licensing system should be replaced with a simple, straightforward, and unlimited licensing system that is low-cost, free of population-based and geographical restrictions, and open to all applicants.
Rather than fix this broken system that creates artificial and economically harmful scarcity, the Legislature has passed numerous carve-outs, exempting various types of businesses. The businesses are not called out by name in Idaho statute, but they are described in enough detail to limit the carve-out to a small number of businesses, or sometimes even just one.
Does it violate the principle of equal protection under the law? Examples include laws that discriminate or differentiate based on age, gender, or religion or which apply laws, regulations, rules, or penalties differently based on such characteristics. Conversely, does it restore or protect the principle of equal protection under the law?
Senate Bill 1258 would amend Section 23-903, Idaho Code, by adding a new subsection that says, “Nothing in this chapter shall prohibit the issuance of a license to the owner, operator, or lessee of an actual, bona fide distillery. A license issued pursuant to this subsection shall authorize the sale of liquor explicitly from brands that are owned by the distillery.”
It further says, “the fees for a license issued pursuant to this subsection shall be the same as those prescribed for golf courses as set forth in section 23-904, Idaho Code.” The referenced section sets liquor license fees for golf courses based on the population of the county.
The bill would also amend Section 23-912, Idaho Code, to clarify that these distilleries “shall not be required to serve food cooked on the site of the licensed premises and shall be authorized to sell liquor from brands explicitly owned by the distillery.”
If applied equally to all distilleries, these changes would remove an unnecessary, government-created barrier to distilleries selling their own products directly to consumers.
The bill could have created the legal carve-out above without disenfranchising certain competitors, but instead it chose to narrowly define a “bona fide distillery” as “a legally authorized premises that manufactures and bottles liquor and is located on no less than five (5) acres of agricultural zoned property in an unincorporated area of Idaho.”
This definition excludes small distilleries on less than five acres as well as those within city limits. In this way, the state is picking winners and losers, creating easier access to liquor licenses for some distilleries while denying it to others.
(-1)
