making a federal case of it

[George Thompson]

Some time ago Fred Shapiro and Barry Popik posted messages regarding the expression "to make a federal case" out of something = to make a big issue out of something trivial.  The end result was several citations found by Barry from 1951.  I had thought that I had posted a message at the time suggesting that the expression might allude to the Mann Act, passed in the mid 1910s, making it a federal offense to bring a woman across a state line for the purpose of fornication.  Modestly, I acknowledged that the only barrier between this insight and its general acceptance was the lack of any evidence to support it.  I don't find my message in the archives through a search for postings on "federal case", though.

Here is a slight antedating from the Proquest Washington Post of the expression in its figurative sense:
"I'm not trying to make a Federal case of it, but Mi Scandal and Petty Larceny won the two chief races on the Friday program"  [The lead to an article on the horseraces at the Charles Town track.]  Washington Post, December 30, 1950, p. 11.

Here is an interesting use of the expression, apparently with reference to the Mann Act, from 15 years earlier, found in Proquest's Chicago Tribune files.  The context is an elopement from Colorado to Chicago by a 21 year old rodeo cowboy and a 16 year old girl.  Quoting a message from the Sheriff of Sterling Colorado to the Chicago police:
"Please arrest and hold these parties, as the girl's folks are about crazy.  If there is no law to hold Bartlett on we'll make a federal case of it."  Chicago Tribune, May 22, 1936, p. 1

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998.