The State of Minnesota has attempted to limit the profession of deer farming to a small number of practitioners. Minnesota policymakers’ concerns about deer disease led them to increase the regulation of deer farming: Minnesota requires a license to farm deer, and the state is no longer issuing new licenses. Furthermore, existing licenses can only be transferred once – and only to immediate family members. In short, Minnesota has confined the business of deer farming to a privileged class.

When fundamental rights are threatened, the government must overcome a high barrier to prove that the regulations that intrude on those rights are justified. Cato’s amicus brief in Minnesota Deer Farmers Association v. Strommen argues that Minnesota’s deer farming regulations intrude on a fundamental right – the right to pursue a profession – and that the Court should grant the petitioners’ request to consider this case.

The demonstration of a fundamental right requires (at least) three steps. First, one must consider and describe the nature of the right with precision. In this case, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals found that the fundamental right at issue was a highly specific right: the fundamental right to farm deer. Our brief argues that the lower court made an error of focus. Of course there isn’t a fundamental right to farm deer, any more than there is a fundamental right to own one particular model of gun or to speak one particular word. People have general rights under the Constitution: Just as we have the general right to bear arms and to free speech, we have the general right to pursue a profession.

Second, one must establish that the right is deeply rooted in the nation’s history and tradition. The right to choose one’s own profession passes that test. Indeed, protections of the right to pursue a profession long predate our nation; the Founders were clear that the pursuit of a profession was critical to their conception of liberty. Courts shared this perspective throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and well into the twentieth. In fact, the modern dismissal of the fundamental right to pursue a profession lacks deep roots in the nation’s history and tradition.

Third, one must establish that the right is at the core of our conception of ordered liberty. Most people spend much of their lives at work, and most people understand the work they do as central to the life choices they make. Many people choose jobs and careers not just for the paycheck, but for the meaning and importance of the work they do. Such choices are at the core of ordered liberty.

Cato’s amicus brief therefore asks the Supreme Court to take up this case – and ultimately to recognize the relevance of the fundamental right to pursue one’s chosen profession to this case.