Marvin and Laura Horne were only asking to keep their raisins.
The Hornes, farmers in California, wanted to sell all the dried grapes they produced, but every year some of their crop was seized by a federal agency called the Raisin Administrative Committee.
That absurd-sounding body is a relic, the product of New Deal-era policies that sought to regulate the prices of goods in order to prevent "destructive competition."
Conspiring to keep prices artificially high would get private parties in hot water, but when the government does it, it's perfectly legal.
Hence the RAC, which has the power to seize raisins from private growers and put them in our National Raisin Reserve (yes, that's what it's actually called), thereby keeping them off the private domestic market.
Raisin handlers are legally required to surrender whatever percentage of their crops the RAC sees fit to demand. In some years, it's been as much as 47 percent. The government sells the extra raisins in foreign markets, or feeds them to livestock or schoolchildren.
If the RAC makes a profit from the raisins, it's supposed to return money to the raisin producers. But in one recent year, the government made over $68 million from the excess raisins, and the farmers got nothing. The money went to storage fees, administrative overhead, and advertising.
The government said the raisin growers had no right to complain about the program, since they benefited from the higher raisin prices induced by the artificial shortage.
But the Hornes complained nonetheless. In 2002, they began refusing to surrender their raisins to the feds. The government was displeased. It began levying fines, eventually amounting to nearly $700,000. A lengthy legal battle ensued.
On Monday, the Supreme Court vindicated the Hornes. By a vote of 8-1, it said that the government's attempted seizure of their raisins was a "taking" of private property, for which the Fifth Amendment requires fair compensation.
A lower court had ruled that since the raisins weren't "real property" - the legal term for land and buildings - the Fifth Amendment didn't apply. The most important thing the Supreme Court did on Monday was to give that pernicious distinction the emphatic beat-down it deserved.
The court's opinion could not be clearer: the Fifth Amendment applies to all kinds of property, not just real property. "The Government has a categorical duty to pay just compensation when it takes your car, just as when it takes your home," wrote Chief Justice John Roberts.
The Supreme Court was also unimpressed by the government's argument that the Hornes could have avoided having their raisins seized if only they'd planted different crops, or used their grapes for another purpose.
"'Let them sell wine' is probably not much more comforting to the raisin growers than similar retorts have been to others throughout history," said the majority.
Selling produce, the court said, isn't "a special governmental benefit that the government may hold hostage."
That's an important holding, and one that could have implications in other situations where the government imposes unreasonable burdens on people engaging in commerce.
Beyond the legal holdings, one of the best things about the case is that has put a spotlight on our nation's bizarre, logic-defying agricultural policies.
Artificial shortages, price floors, farmers paid to throw food away - the raisin program is just one example of a system dominated by rent-seeking interest groups and skewed against consumers.
The government's raisin program - and similar programs for things like cherries, avocados, and pistachios - may have been dealt a blow, but we have a long way to go to get to a sane agricultural policy.
One of the most powerful passages in John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" describes the intentional destruction of food to keep prices high.
Steinbeck writes of men spraying kerosene on oranges while malnourished children watched, of potatoes being dumped in rivers and guards stationed on the banks to keep hungry people from fishing them out.
A government committee that seizes crops from farmers so that citizens will pay more for raisins is little better. Thanks to the Supreme Court's decision, the Hornes' grapes of wrath are a fruitful harvest.
Laurie Lin is a Daily Mail columnist. Contact her at laurie.lin@dailymailwv.com or follow her on Twitter at @wvpundette.