diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index c1d4a789d7..ff5f043877 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -135,19 +135,6 @@ def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
         self.rtool.refactor_dir('docs', write=True) 
         open(checkpoint_fn, 'wta').write('converted')
 
-cmdclass = {}
-if sys.version_info[0] < 3:
-    setup_requires.append('3to2')
-    # cmdclass allows you to override the distutils commands that are
-    # run through 'python setup.py somecmd'. Under python 2.7 replace
-    # the 'build_py' with a custom subclass (build_py27) that invokes
-    # 3to2 refactoring on each python file as its copied to the build
-    # directory.
-    cmdclass['build_py'] = build_py27
-    print(cmdclass)
-
-# (Under python3 no commands are replaced, so the default command classes are used.)
-
 def _setup(**kwargs):
 
     # the following hack is taken from scipy's setup.py