## Facts

- Congress enacted the Filled Milk Act of 1923, defining “filled milk” as milk or skimmed milk mixed with non-milk fats or oils to resemble milk or cream, declaring it injurious and deceptive, and barring its interstate shipment.
- Carolene Products Company manufactured “Milnut,” a compound of condensed skimmed milk and coconut oil resembling condensed milk or cream.
- A federal grand jury indicted Carolene Products in the Southern District of Illinois for shipping Milnut in interstate commerce in violation of the Act.
- The district court sustained a demurrer to the indictment, holding the Act unconstitutional.
- The United States appealed directly to the Supreme Court under the Criminal Appeals Act.

## Issues

1. Whether Congress, under the Commerce Clause, may prohibit interstate shipment of “filled milk” as defined by the Filled Milk Act.
2. Whether the Act violates the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause by arbitrarily restricting interstate commerce in Carolene’s product and by treating legislative findings as conclusive.
3. Whether the Act is unconstitutional because it is underinclusive by not prohibiting other similar products.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed and upheld the Filled Milk Act as constitutional.
- The Act was within Congress’s power to regulate—and prohibit—interstate commerce in goods Congress could regard as harmful or deceptive.
- The Act did not violate Fifth Amendment due process because it had a rational basis supported by facts Congress could reasonably credit.
- Underinclusiveness did not invalidate the statute; Congress could address the identified problem without regulating all related substitutes.
- The demurrer should have been overruled, and the indictment reinstated.

## Legal Principles

- Congress’s commerce power includes authority to exclude specified articles from interstate channels when Congress could rationally view them as injurious or fraudulent.
- Economic and commercial legislation is presumed constitutional and is sustained if any reasonably conceivable set of facts could support it; courts do not reweigh legislative evidence under due process review.
- Legislative declarations and committee materials may be treated as legislative findings that inform whether a statute has a rational basis.
- A statute is not unconstitutional merely because it is underinclusive; the legislature may proceed incrementally and regulate one problem at a time.
- Footnote 4 indicated that more searching judicial review may be appropriate when legislation conflicts with specific constitutional guarantees, distorts political processes, or targets discrete and insular minorities, though that approach was not applied to this economic regulation.

## Conclusion

The Court sustained a federal ban on interstate shipment of filled milk, applying deferential rational-basis review to uphold Congress’s judgment under the Commerce Clause and Fifth Amendment due process, while signaling in Footnote 4 that heightened scrutiny may apply in cases involving enumerated rights, political-process restrictions, or prejudice against vulnerable minorities.


United States v. Carolene Prods. Co., 304 U.S. 144 (1938)