ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Nix v. Hedden

Nix v. Hedden is a case that was decided by the Supreme Court of the United States, which means that really important people had to make a decision about something. The case was about whether or not a tomato was a fruit or a vegetable.

Now, you might be thinking, well of course a tomato is a vegetable. But did you know that scientifically speaking, a tomato is actually a fruit? That's because a fruit is a part of the plant that has seeds, and a tomato has seeds inside of it. On the other hand, a vegetable is any other part of a plant, like roots or leaves or stems, that we can eat.

So, in Nix v. Hedden, a group of farmers said that they should be able to pay lower taxes on their tomatoes, because they should be classified as a fruit and not a vegetable. They argued that since tomatoes were fruits, they were exempt from certain taxes.

However, the Supreme Court ultimately ruled that tomatoes were vegetables, not fruits, for the purposes of the tax law. The Court said that even though tomatoes are scientifically fruits, they are commonly considered vegetables in cooking and eating, and that's what mattered in this case.

In the end, Nix v. Hedden shows us that sometimes words can have different meanings depending on the context in which they are used, and that can be really important when it comes to laws and taxes.