In 2012, in the case of 907 Whitehead Street, Inc. vs U.S. Secretary of Agriculture (USDA), the plaintiff challenged the jurisdiction of the USDA and its Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to regulate the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum as an animal exhibitor.

The museum is home to dozens of polydactyl cats, the progeny of a cat that Ernest Hemingway was given as a pet when he lived there during the 1930s. Following a complaint by a museum visitor, the USDA visited the museum and in October 2003, determined that the Museum was an animal exhibitor subject to regulation under the AWA because the Museum exhibited the cats for the cost of an admission fee, and the cats were used in promotional advertising.

Under USDA regulations, the museum is required to obtain a USDA exhibitor's license, give each cat a tag for identification purposes, provide additional resting surfaces within their existing enclosures, and introduce one of several specified improvements required to ensure the cats remain contained to the museum's grounds.

The museum challenged on several grounds the USDA's authority in the case, noting that the Hemingway cats do not have an effect on interstate commerce sufficient to merit federal regulation. As of December 2012, the case had reached the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, which upheld earlier district court rulings.