The federal government can no longer tell family farmers how many raisins to grow and sell, the US Supreme Court ruled Monday in a case in which one farmer was fined $680,000 simply because he refused to obey the government's orders.

The decision was a defeat for the Obama administration, which had argued that taking upwards of one-half of a farmer's crop was nothing more than "market regulation."

The government must compensate him, the court ruled in a 5-4 decision.

"The Government has a categorical duty to pay just compensation when it takes your car, just as when it takes your home," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the court's opinion in a case called Horne vs. Department of Agriculture.

Raisins, he wrote, are "the fruit of the growers' labor," and not "public things subject to the absolute control of the state,"

California raisin farmer Marvin D. Horne had argued that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) violated the takings clause in the Fifth Amendment by fining him for not turning over part of his crop to a federal agency, the Raisin Administrative Committee, which determines each year what percentage of raisins farmers can't sell.