IF YOUR house lies in the path of a new interstate highway, the government will pay you for your property before kicking you out and calling in the asphalt trucks. The “takings clause” of the Fifth Amendment requires “just compensation” whenever the state takes private property for public use, and until this week this was read to apply mainly to land and homes. But on June 22nd the Supreme Court greatly expanded what counts as “private property”. “The government has a categorical duty to pay just compensation when it takes your car,” it said, “just as when it takes your home.”

Neither cars nor houses were at stake in Horne v United States Department of Agriculture. The case concerns raisins, specifically the raisin crop of family farmers Marvin and Laura Horne of Fresno, California. The Hornes balked in 2002 when they were asked to hand over 47% of their raisins to a Raisin Administrative Committee appointed by the secretary of agriculture. They were displeased in 2003 as well, when the figure was 30%. Instead of obeying, they sold the whole crop themselves, incurring fines of nearly $700,000.

The Hornes fought back, claiming that it violates the Fifth Amendment to strip people of their crops without paying them first, but they had no luck in court. The Ninth Circuit Court held that this was a mere “regulatory” taking, since growers may get some of the proceeds when excess raisins are sold below market value to federal food programmes, exporters or foreign governments.

Eight justices voted to reverse that ruling. Chief Justice John Roberts pointed especially to clause 28 of Magna Carta (extracted from King John in 1215), which “specifically protected agricultural crops from uncompensated takings”. The colonists “brought the principles of Magna Carta with them to the New World”, he wrote, and had them in mind when they drafted the Fifth Amendment.

The government’s last-ditch argument was that grape growers could just get out of the raisin business if they disliked the rules. But selling one’s fruit is not “a special governmental benefit that the government may hold hostage”, Mr Roberts wrote. “ ‘Let them sell wine’ isn’t much more comforting to the raisin growers than similar retorts have been to others throughout history.” Besides, Mr Roberts wrote, raisins “are not dangerous pesticides; they are a healthy snack”.

In an opinion written by Stephen Breyer, three justices concurred with the ruling but would have asked the Ninth Circuit to factor in the higher raisin prices the Hornes could get because of the set-aside order; those profits should be weighed, he wrote, against the losses.

The Horne family is thrilled with the decision. “The monkey is off my back,” Mr Horne declared. Some constitutional lawyers, though, fear a new monkey may have landed on theirs: a vague but potentially wide expansion of the universe of items the government must compensate citizens for when it seizes them for public use.