After Tennessee Wine a trans-border delivery rule that discriminates against interstate commerce is forbidden.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit heard oral arguments on September 17, 2026, in Freehan v. Berg, the challenge to an Illinois law that lets in-state wine retailers ship to Illinois residents while denying that privilege to out-of-state retailers.
The plaintiffs are Washington-based wine retailer Full Pull Wines and Illinois wine collectors Timothy Freehan and Joseph Grody, who say many rare wines they seek are not sold by Illinois retailers. On September 25, 2025, Judge Jeremy C. Daniel of the Northern District of Illinois granted summary judgment for the defendants, Illinois Liquor Control Commission members and the Wine and Spirits Distributors of Illinois. The case is now before a Seventh Circuit panel of Judges Frank Easterbrook, Ilana Rovner and Rebecca Taibleson.
The central question is whether Illinois's retailer shipping law discriminates against interstate commerce, and if so whether the state can justify it under the Twenty-First Amendment, following the Supreme Court's framework in Tennessee Wine & Spirits Retailers Ass'n v. Thomas.
A panel of opposites
The panel brings together judges who have already landed on opposite sides of this question. Judge Rovner sat on the panel in Lebamoff v. Rauner, which unanimously held that Illinois's retailer shipping law was discriminatory, found it unjustified on the existing record, and remanded for the state to produce evidence supporting the discrimination.
Judge Easterbrook sat on the panel in Chicago Wine Co. v. Braun, 148 F.4th 530 (7th Cir. 2025), which upheld Indiana's comparable law in a per curiam decision. The two judges in the majority agreed on the result but not on the reasoning, and each wrote separately: Easterbrook concluded the law did not discriminate at all, while Judge Scudder assumed discrimination but found Indiana had justified it.
Alex Tanford, arguing for Freehan, contended that Lebamoff controls because it addressed this Illinois law and the law has not changed since. Judge Easterbrook disagreed, asserting that Chicago Wine had already determined how Lebamoff should be treated. Judge Taibleson, the most active questioner at argument and the vote widely seen as deciding the case, pressed Tanford on the practical question of how Illinois could possibly inspect out-of-state retailers; he answered that the state could do what it already does with out-of-state wineries, which it licenses and permits.
The Easterbrook trap
Illinois, through Assistant Attorney General Sam Horan, maintained the law is not discriminatory because nothing prevents an out-of-state retailer from opening an Illinois location. But the panel's dynamics may cut against the state: in Chicago Wine, Easterbrook reasoned that if a law does discriminate, precedent requires striking it down, and the state does not get to rescue it with evidence. "After Tennessee Wine a trans-border delivery rule that discriminates against interstate commerce is forbidden," he wrote.
Taibleson's questioning was openly skeptical of the claim that Illinois's law does not discriminate, but her questions on inspection and enforcement suggest she is taking the state's evidentiary case seriously. Possible outcomes range from striking the law down, to upholding it on discrimination grounds, to a split: Taibleson rejecting Easterbrook's no-discrimination theory but joining him in the result on the evidence, as Judge Scudder did in Chicago Wine.
The case is one of several retailer-shipping challenges working through the federal circuits, and the Seventh Circuit's treatment of its own precedents will be watched closely by distributors, retailers and direct-to-consumer businesses across the three-tier system.