Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States

The Court held that the National Industrial Recovery Act unconstitutionally delegated lawmaking power and reached beyond interstate commerce.

Overview

The Schechter brothers ran a kosher poultry slaughterhouse in Brooklyn and were convicted of violating the Live Poultry Code issued under the National Industrial Recovery Act, the centerpiece of the early New Deal. In May 1935 a unanimous Court, through Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, struck down the code system, holding that Congress had handed the president and industry groups legislative power without adequate standards and that the local slaughter business only indirectly affected interstate commerce. Known as the sick chicken case, the decision ended the NIRA and helped provoke Franklin Roosevelt's 1937 court-packing plan.