Quote:Steven Cukrov | Dreamstime.com
Last month, an Indiana wine retailer and a handful of consumers in Michigan filed suit in federal court to challenge a new Michigan law that bars out-of-state retailers from shipping wine into the state.

The Michigan law, passed last month, lets retailers inside the state buy a "specially designated merchant license" that will allow them to ship wines to in-state consumers. The benefits of the law, which takes effect next month, is that it'll "make it easier for wineries and in-state retailers to ship to Michigan consumers," reports Wine Spectator. But the law prohibits out-of-state retailers from buying permits.

If you just read that and looked up at the date stamp on this column because you thought this might be a reprint of some classic article from 2005, you'd be forgiven.

Wasn't Granholm v. Heald, decided by the U.S. Supreme Court a dozen years ago, a case about a Michigan law that barred out-of-state wineries from shipping wine into the state? And didn't the Supreme Court rule that Michigan's law was unconstitutional?

Yes and yes. And yet here we are.