Court Lifts Alcohol Sales Restrictions

U.S. District Judge John G. Heyburn II has ruled in favor of removing a Kentucky ban on selling wine and liquor inside grocery stores and other retailers.
 
Heyburn issued a nine-page opinion Monday regarding his decision to find the seven-decade-old ban unconstitutional.
 
The issue came before the court when Maxwell’s Pic-Pac and the Food with Wine coalition in Louisville filed a lawsuit in federal court in 2011.
 
Heyburn ordered that the ban may remain in place for the time being because there are other legal issues to sort out.
 
Heyburn said in his opinion that the state legislature “wanted to limit liquor sales generally ... and it did so by arbitrarily distinguishing grocers from all other retailers” when the law was adopted.
 
“Perhaps back then grocers were different from other potential alcohol vendors in some manner that rationally related to the sale of liquor and wine. If so, none of those differences appear today; most drugstores sell staples and some grocers sell prescription drugs,” Heyburn wrote.