Here are the Respondents’ briefs filed in Byrd (Tennessee Wine & Spirits Retailers Assoc. v. Blair)

The two respondents appointed to represent the interests of the plaintiff back at the district court proceeding have filed their briefs in opposition to the challenge brought by the Tennessee Wine and Retailers Association.

In support of the Sixth Circuit’s ruling, both Total Wine and Kimbrough Fine Wine & Spirits

We’ve embedded the Total Wine brief below, and you can download it here. The brief is enjoyable, and that enjoyment begins right away with a proper challenge to the dogma of the petitioner’s question presented by postulating a more detailed analysis with its own:

Whether  the court  of appeals correctly  held that Tennessee’s durational  residency requirements for licenses    to operate retail liquor stores    are unconstitutional, when the State’s Attorney  General has previously admitted that the requirements  are trade barriers that facially discriminate against   interstate commerce and the State did not attempt to show that they serve a legitimate state interest.

(And, you know it’s a pet peeve of mine, a hearty thanks to the authors of this brief for properly citing that apostate-unfounded-piece-of-trash by Fosdick and Scott – Toward Liquor Control with the right 1933 date and not trying to fudge its relevance and currency by listing the “reprint” date of the vanity publication by the Center for Alcohol Policy).

Additionally, you can download the Kimbrough Fine Wine & Spirits brief here. Their case is perhaps the more emotionally compelling as their brief details their reasons for seeking a license while not meeting the residency requirements challenged in this lawsuit for those seeking liquor retail licenses in Tennessee:

For  Doug and  Mary Ketchum,  the ability to  move to a new state in pursuit of a livelihood, and to be treated equally in that new state, is a matter of life and death. At their doctor’s urging, they left their home in  Utah after their thirty-two-year-old daughter, who has cerebral palsy and quadriplegia, began suffering severe health effects from the temperature inversion  and air stagnation in the Salt Lake Valley. … The Ketchums settled on Tennessee after learning of an opportunity to purchase a wine and liquor store in Memphis. Becoming business  owners would afford them flexibility to care for their daughter, who requires full-time attention, while also providing for their family.

As a bonus, law professor Alan B. Morrison of GW Law School filed an amicus brief urging affirmance on the separate ground that the Privileges & Immunities Clause of Article IV, section 2 of the Constitution prohibits the type of discrimination against out-of-state residents this case challenges. You can download that brief here. This is an important read as the opinion by Judge Diane Wood in the 7th Circuit’s recent Lebamoff decision reviving a challenge to Illinois’ retailer law prohibiting out-of-state retailers from obtaining licenses to ship alcoholic beverages to Illinois residents gave this argument short shrift. Perhaps the arguments advanced by professor Morrison, given their greater detail, can be used in subsequent challenges to alcohol control laws that treat out-of-state retailers different than in-state retailers.