No appeal means legal win for food truck owners who sued Jacksonville

The city of Jacksonville will not appeal an April court order favoring two food truck owners and a property owner who sued the city over its food truck rules. That’s according to a news release Thursday from the Institute for Justice.

Jacksonville has repealed the three restrictions challenged in the lawsuit.

IJ represented food truck owners Anthony “Tony” Proctor and Octavius “Ray” Raymond, along with Northwoods Urban Farm owner Nicole Gonzalez, in the legal dispute.

Superior Court Judge Robert Roupe ruled that the plaintiffs “prevailed on all their claims for retrospective relief.” Roupe ordered the city to pay the plaintiffs $12 in nominal damages, along with more than $15,000 in lawyers’ fees.

“The court’s judgment is now final, which means that these restrictions will not return to Jacksonville,” said Justin Pearson, IJ senior attorney. “The government doesn’t get to pick winners and losers in the marketplace.”

IJ and its plaintiffs challenged rules that “had made it illegal to sell food from trucks in nearly 90% of the city, including where Nicole’s store is located,” according to the news release. The rules barred Gonzalez from allowing food trucks to operate on her private property.

“That is because Jacksonville officials took a dim view of competition and consumer choice,” IJ argued in its news release. “The city preferred to ‘help’ brick-and-mortar restaurants by quelling food truck freedom.”

The suit challenged a Jacksonville rule that blocked food trucks from operating within 250 feet of any property that had a brick-and-mortar restaurant, another food truck, or residential zoning. The plaintiffs also targeted signage restrictions and an annual $300 food truck permit fee.

“The government is not allowed to restrict food trucks just because they might compete with their friends’ restaurants,” said IJ attorney Robert Fellner. “These laws didn’t just hurt food truck owners and the property owners who wanted to invite them, but the laws also took away people’s freedom to choose where to eat. Thanks to this court victory, those freedoms have been restored.”

Roupe’s April 9 order followed a March 23 court hearing in which he announced his plans to rule in favor of the food truck owners and Gonzalez.

“What the court did, which was to award us all of our relief even after repeal, strongly suggests that North Carolina courts take economic freedom seriously and that this kind of protectionism will not be tolerated,” Fellner said after the March hearing.

The Jacksonville Planning Advisory Board voted earlier in March to remove the most onerous restrictions in its food truck ordinance, and the Jacksonville City Council followed by unanimously repealing the rules on March 17.

“The reason we were pursuing this is that our plaintiffs were entitled to recognition from the courts that what happened to them was wrong and unconstitutional,” said Fellner. “More broadly, we were pursuing that declaration and recognition that what the city did was unconstitutional to make sure the city couldn’t do it again and to ensure other cities would be unable to engage in those kinds of rights violations.”

The suit survived after the North Carolina Court of Appeals reversed a trial court’s dismissal and allowed the constitutional claims to proceed.

“Back in 2020, when we were first looking at food trucks, they were a relatively new item,” said Nick Semandares, a member of the Planning Advisory Board during a March 9 meeting on the restrictions. “We didn’t know a whole lot about it, and so we did some things that were protectionist, that maybe we don’t need to worry about now, because this seems to have taken care of it. Maybe it is time that we can lift the 250‑foot spacing requirement.”

Ryan King, Jacksonville’s planning director, told board members that the city’s rules didn’t align with other municipalities.

“For example, the 250‑foot rule, I don’t recall seeing that in, say Wilmington or Raleigh, so that’s part of the reason why we’re talking about removing those items as well,” he said.

City attorney Lorna Welch warned the board that repeal may not stop legal action.

“I can’t even stand before you in good faith and tell you that this is going to solve the lawsuit,” said Welch. “I’m just telling you the lawsuit I think gave us an opportunity to say, they’re only challenging these specific areas, let’s look closely at those and see if they’re necessary or if really they’re not necessary.”

“No appeal means legal win for food truck owners who sued Jacksonville” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.