The case was unusual because the arguments centered on the rarely-invoked Twenty-First Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1933, which ended Prohibition in the United States.

The same argument was made in a separate case against the government of New York State by Juanita Swedenburg and other owners of out-of-state wineries.

In both cases, the state governments of Michigan and New York had argued that Section 2 of the Twenty-First Amendment granted them carte blanche to regulate liquor.

One of their justifications for the laws was that by regulating out-of-state wineries that way, they might be able to hinder the shipment of alcohol to underage minors, which would serve a valid state purpose.

As a Wall Street Journal editorial noted,[citation needed] two cases per month is a relatively large amount of wine for a consumer, but the measure was intended to reduce competition for New York alcohol distributors.

An editorial article on the commercial wine selling web site Appellation America states that many of the conditions in those regulations are so complex or so expensive that they discourage wineries from complying.