Champion v. Ames: The Lottery Case and Federal Police Power

Champion v. Ames, decided 5-4 by the Supreme Court on February 23, 1903, upheld a federal law banning the interstate shipment of lottery tickets and established that Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce includes the power to prohibit it entirely. The ruling gave the federal government what scholars have since called a police power under the Commerce Clause, and it opened the door to a century of federal statutes that keep disfavored goods out of interstate channels.¹

What Happened

In 1899, Charles Champion arranged to ship a box of Pan-American Lottery Company tickets from Dallas, Texas, to Fresno, California, through Wells-Fargo Express Company. The lottery held its monthly drawings in Asunción, Paraguay. A federal marshal arrested him for violating the Anti-Lottery Act of 1895. Champion petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus, arguing Congress had no constitutional authority to criminalize shipping a piece of paper across a state line. The circuit court dismissed his petition, and the case reached the Supreme Court.¹

The Law at Issue

The Anti-Lottery Act of 1895 made it a federal crime to move any lottery ticket, share, or certificate from one state to another by mail, common carrier, or personal delivery. It also reached lottery advertisements shipped across state lines and lottery materials imported from abroad. A first offense carried up to two years in prison, a fine of up to $1,000, or both.²

The Two Questions the Court Decided

Are Lottery Tickets Commerce?

Champion’s lawyers argued that a lottery ticket is a slip of paper representing a contingent promise, not a commodity with intrinsic value, so shipping one is not commerce. Justice John Marshall Harlan, writing for the majority, disagreed. Lottery tickets, he wrote, “are subjects of traffic among those who choose to sell or buy them,” and moving them between states through an independent carrier “is therefore interstate commerce.”¹ What mattered was that people bought and sold them for money, not the physical form of the item.

Can Congress Prohibit, Not Just Regulate?

Once the tickets were classified as commerce, the harder question was whether Congress could ban their interstate movement outright rather than simply setting terms for it. Harlan wrote that the commerce power “is plenary, complete in itself, and may be exerted by Congress to its utmost extent, subject only to such limitations as the Constitution imposes.”³ If Congress can regulate the flow of an item, it can shut the flow off.

Harlan framed the ban as protection for states that had outlawed lotteries internally but could do nothing about tickets pouring in from elsewhere. Congress was “assisting those states that wished to protect public morals by prohibiting lotteries within their borders,” and the federal government should not have to let its channels of interstate transport carry gambling operations into unwilling states.⁴

The opinion tried to hold itself narrow. Harlan wrote that the Court decided “nothing more in the present case” than that lottery tickets are subjects of commerce, that their interstate transport falls under congressional power, and that Congress may prohibit that transport without violating the Constitution.³ The reasoning that got him there was much broader than the lottery-specific holding.

The Dissent

Chief Justice Melville Fuller, joined by three others, saw a constitutional line being crossed. He argued that lottery tickets were closer to insurance policies, which the Court had already held were not interstate commerce. Both were contingent contracts, not commodities. Tickets, he wrote, “are not subjects of trade and barter offered in the market as something having an existence and value independent of the parties to them.”³

His larger objection was structural. Suppressing lotteries had always been state police work, protected under the Tenth Amendment. Handing that authority to Congress, he warned, was “a long step in the direction of wiping out all traces of state lines, and the creation of a centralized government.”³

Why the Case Still Matters

Champion gave Congress a template. If a product is harmful, close the channels of interstate commerce to it. Federal lawmakers used that template quickly and often.

The Court applied the same reasoning in Hipolite Egg Co. v. United States (1911) to uphold the Pure Food and Drug Act, keeping adulterated food out of interstate commerce. Two years later, Hoke v. United States (1913) sustained the Mann Act’s ban on transporting women across state lines for prostitution. Both decisions treated Champion as controlling.

The doctrine met resistance in Hammer v. Dagenhart (1918), where the Court struck down a federal ban on the interstate shipment of goods made with child labor. The majority there drew a distinction between harmful goods and harmless goods produced under conditions Congress disliked. That distinction held for a generation before the Court abandoned it. By 1964, Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States upheld Title II of the Civil Rights Act, confirming that Congress could reach local businesses whose operations affected interstate commerce.⁵

The federal commerce power today reaches drugs, firearms, environmental pollution, workplace safety, and civil rights. Fuller’s warning about a centralized government reads either as prophecy or as an accurate description of modern governance, depending on the reader. Champion v. Ames is where the door opened.

What Happened to the Lottery Ban

The 1895 statute is still on the books, now codified as 18 U.S.C. § 1301. It remains a federal crime to move lottery tickets, advertisements, or prize lists across state lines through an express company or common carrier, with a penalty of a fine, up to two years in prison, or both.⁶

State lotteries operate legally because 18 U.S.C. § 1307 carves out exceptions. A state can advertise and transport tickets for its own lottery within its borders and in other states that also run lotteries. The exemption also covers not-for-profit lotteries and occasional promotional sweepstakes run by commercial businesses, provided state law authorizes them.⁷ The default federal ban is intact, and Congress has simply chosen where to relax it. That structure is exactly what Justice Harlan’s 1903 opinion made possible.

1
Justia. Lottery Case, 188 U.S. 321 (1903)
2
Government Publishing Office. 28 U.S. Statutes at Large 963 – An Act For the Suppression of Lottery Traffic
3
FindLaw. Champion v. Ames, 188 U.S. 321 (1903)
4
Oyez. Champion v. Ames
5
Oyez. Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 1301 – Importing or Transporting Lottery Tickets
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 1307 – Exceptions Relating to Certain Advertisements and Other Information and to State-Conducted Lotteries