Lottery Case
The Supreme Court ruled that Congress can make it a crime to send lottery tickets across state lines using a private freight company, because carrying lottery tickets between states counts as interstate commerce that Congress may regulate.
The ruling matters because it confirmed that Congress's commerce power can be used not just to set rules for trade, but to ban a kind of interstate traffic outright, opening the door to broader federal regulation of goods and activities that cross state lines.
“We are of opinion that lottery tickets are subjects of traffic and therefore are subjects of commerce, and the regulation of the carriage of such tickets from State to State, at least by independent carriers, is a regulation of commerce among the several States.”
The core holding that lottery tickets count as commerce Congress can regulate.
How it got here: The case reached the Supreme Court on appeal from the Circuit Court of the United States for the Northern District of Illinois.
The Case in Depth
What happened
A federal statute, the Act of March 2, 1895, made it a crime to cause lottery tickets to be carried from one state to another. A man was convicted of causing tickets from a Paraguay-based lottery, printed in the United States, to be shipped by an express company between states. He argued that lottery tickets were not legitimate objects of commerce and that Congress had no power to criminalize their transport.
The question before the Court
Could Congress make it a federal crime to send lottery tickets from one state to another by a private shipping company?
Why it matters
The decision meant Congress could use its commerce power to combat activities it considered harmful, even by banning them outright, rather than just setting rules for how they operate. This gave the federal government a tool to address national problems like gambling that individual states could not fully control on their own, foreshadowing later federal bans on other goods and conduct moving across state lines.
What changes now
This was a final merits decision, not a temporary order. The conviction and lower court judgment were affirmed, meaning the federal ban on interstate transport of lottery tickets stood as valid. The ruling left open how far Congress's commerce power might extend to prohibit other kinds of interstate traffic, a question the Court explicitly declined to resolve beyond the lottery-ticket context.
What this does not decide
The Court expressly limited its holding to lottery tickets carried by independent carriers, stating it decided 'nothing more' than that such tickets are subjects of traffic and that Congress may ban their interstate carriage. It did not decide how far Congress could go in excluding other articles or activities from interstate commerce.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent — Justice Fuller
“If a lottery ticket is not an article of commerce, how can it become so when placed in an envelope or box or other covering, and transported by an express company?”The dissent's central objection that mere transport cannot turn something into an article of commerce.
Chief Justice Fuller argued that lottery tickets are not genuine articles of commerce, comparing them to insurance policies, which the Court had already ruled were not commerce. He contended that suppressing lotteries is a matter of state police power reserved by the Tenth Amendment, and that letting Congress ban interstate carriage of non-commercial items like lottery tickets would let Congress claim a general police power never granted to it, eroding the line between state and federal authority.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court reviewed decades of prior rulings on the commerce clause, starting with Gibbons v. Ogden, which held that 'commerce' means more than buying and selling — it includes all forms of commercial intercourse between states, and that Congress's power over it is complete and subject only to constitutional limits.
- Applying that broad understanding, the Court reasoned that a lottery ticket has real value because it represents a chance at a cash prize and can itself be bought and sold, so lottery tickets are 'subjects of traffic' just like other goods.
- Because lottery tickets are subjects of traffic, and because carrying them across state lines is what the statute targeted, the Court concluded that transporting lottery tickets between states is itself interstate commerce that Congress has authority to regulate.
- The Court then addressed whether Congress could go so far as to ban this traffic rather than merely set rules for it, reasoning that the Constitution does not limit 'regulation' to permissive rules — Congress's broad discretion over the means of executing its powers can include prohibiting a specific kind of interstate traffic it views as harmful.
- Drawing on examples like the ban on shipping diseased cattle and the Sherman Antitrust Act's prohibition of certain contracts, the Court concluded that prohibition is a legitimate form of regulation when Congress reasonably judges it necessary to suppress a harmful interstate trade.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Gibbons v. Ogden (9 Wheat. 1)
The Court relied on Gibbons's broad definition of commerce as 'intercourse' to support Congress's expansive commerce power.
Reaffirms In re Rahrer (140 U.S. 545)
The Court cited Rahrer as recognizing that Congress's commerce power can sometimes be used to exclude articles from interstate trade.