City leaders are clamping down on small entrepreneurs to protect the profits of their wealthy business allies.
Married partners Theslet Benoir and Clemene Bastien immigrated from Haiti and settled in Parksley, Virginia, in 2005. They followed the law when they opened a brick-and-mortar store and expanded with the city’s first food truck in June 2023.
The local government has celebrated the couple’s entrepreneurial spirit. Instead, he was punished: A city council member arrived at the restaurant and confronted Benoir and Bastien over their food truck a week after launch, accusing the pair of stealing businesses at nearby restaurants. When the couple refused to close, the elected official cut a pipe, temporarily knocking the food truck out of service and causing the food to spoil.
“When I got here and saw him cutting the pipe, I was not satisfied at all,” Benoir said in French Creole. “I stayed there because I knew he was a man of law. He didn’t know exactly what to do, but he was shocked. The official returned the next day and interfered with grocery deliveries. He said he had the authority to seize the assets and take “corrective action” because his advisory duties included supervision of the city’s public works department. However, enforcing the law is the job of code enforcement officials or police, not policymakers.
Faced with the patience of Benoir and Bastien, the government responded with a new kind of intimidation. The city council passed an ordinance banning all food trucks unless special events are held. The fact that Benoir and Bastien were operating with their own assets didn’t matter.
After the vote, the mayor announced that the town did not intend to enforce the new ordinance until Benoir and Bastien’s annual license had expired in summer 2024. The clock was ticking. Our public interest law firm, the Institute for Justice, decided not to wait. Working with the couple, we sent a letter on November 2, 2023, urging the town to repeal its ordinance.
Many municipalities back down when we lay out the constitutional case for economic liberty — the right to earn an honest living. Most recently, Haines City, Florida, reversed plans to criminalize food trucks following our intervention. But Parksley, an Eastern Shore community north of Virginia Beach, dug in.
The day after we won our letter, the city attorney threatened to jail Benoir and Bastien. The city also reneged on its promise to allow them to operate their food truck until their entry permits expired. To avoid hefty fines and jail time, the couple immediately ceases operations.
Terrified, the law-abiding couple obeyed. But they gave up the fight. Represented through our firm, they filed a lawsuit on January 23, 2024. Their complaint only alleges loss of economic freedom, but also a violation of their First Amendment right to speak without retaliation. Protesters can exceed the First Amendment’s time, place, and manner limits by obstructing or trespassing, but mailing messages is obviously safe.
“When I received the letter from the town attorney, I got very sad because I was trying to do something good,” Benoir said in French Creole. “Even the people who were coming and buying from my business — some of them were hungry because they did not know how to cook, so they were buying food from me. When I was unable to serve them, some of them even cried.”
Tactics vary, but attempts like Parksley’s to sideline cellphone companies are becoming more common across the country. Many municipalities talk in hypothetical terms about health and safety hazards without proving the actual harms. Whatever the rhetoric, the real lines of war are between the “inside” and the “foreigners. “Concerned about alienating a politically tied electorate from the competition, city leaders are enacting regulations to prevent marginalized personnel like Haitian immigrants Benoir and Bastien from joining the mainstream economy.
The motivations are economic. Other times, the other privileged just need to maintain a formula that works in their favor. Our law firm has been protecting cases from coast to coast for 30 years and we see those attitudes everywhere. This is not a matter of red or blue status. Unfortunately, protecting the hardliners from the festival is bipartisan.
Street vendors and food truck owners are, in particular, vulnerable targets. Our company’s studies show that they have a tendency to be at an economic disadvantage. Most are immigrants, 62 percent are other people of color, and 28 percent have not finished high school.
Most mobile business owners lack access to backroom dealmaking. They do not have time to get involved in local politics. They work too much. Our research shows that full-time sidewalk vendors put in, on average, more than 11 hours a day, five-and-a-half days a week. Three out of four part-time vendors hold a second job.
It is easy to blame them – akin to intimidation – for the imbalance of forces. Mobile service providers lack the clout to hold press conferences and lack the resources to prosecute. Some operate in the shadows due to a rigged regulatory environment and are therefore afraid. speak. Others have limited English proficiency.
But when they hear their voices, they tell disturbing stories: New York City police officers arrested María Falcón for promoting mangoes in a subway station in 2022. Police handcuffed her, strip-searched her, destroyed her stock, and issued a subpoena. judicial.
Brothers Anubis and Adonai Avalos were not even able to begin their mission in South Padre Island, Texas. They have a food truck, but the city has prohibited them from driving it on the sidewalk and setting up shop without written permission from a local store. -Owner of the place to eat mortar.
Baltimore zoning officials adopted another technique with Army veteran Joey Vanoni. He was told he could just drive his food truck, but within some distance of a physical food establishment. Regulations left Vanoni with almost nowhere to park.
This is not an unusual tactic. Jacksonville, North Carolina, for example, bans food trucks from 96% of the city. Meanwhile, San Diego waged a war against street vendors. Recently, the mayor threatened to confiscate the carts and destroy the stock of street vendors caught promoting food in certain parts of the city.
None of this hostility is necessary. Research shows that mobile food companies create an overall benefit in the communities where they operate by attracting more consumers to an area. A Los Angeles study calls this “curbside stimulation. ” Traditional retail establishments (including restaurants) close to street vendors in Los Angeles were more likely to enjoy business expansion than other retail establishments.
Back in Virginia, Benoir and Bastien just want a chance to compete on a level playing field. Their lack of political influence shouldn’t matter. It’s not the government’s job to pick winners and losers in the marketplace. That choice belongs to consumers.
Justin Pearson is a senior at the Institute for Justice in Arlington, Virginia.
Daryl James works at the Justice Institute in Arlington, Virginia.