San Antonio admits anti-competitive food truck law is “not defensible”

The law, which is similar to Chicago’s food-truck rules, was changed when San Antonio’s city attorney advised the city’s best bet was to change its rules as opposed to going to court.

For more than 30 years, it was against the law for a food truck to operate within 300 feet of a brick-and-mortar restaurant in San Antonio, Texas. Anyone caught violating the rule could be fined up to $2,000 per offense.

This month, the city finally repealed that provision – only after the Institute for Justice filed a lawsuit challenging it on Oct. 6. The lawsuit pointed out that the Texas Constitution (like the Illinois Constitution) requires all laws to be aimed at protecting the public’s health, safety or welfare – and San Antonio’s rule served only to protect brick-and-mortar restaurants from competition.

San Antonio City Attorney Martha Sepeda had to agree: She concluded that the law was “not defensible,” and the city promptly repealed it.

San Antonio’s response couldn’t be more different from the reactions of Illinois cities that have faced similar challenges to their own anti-competitive food-truck ordinances.

Consider Evanston, Illinois. It has an ordinance that not only prohibits food trucks from operating within 100 feet of a brick-and-mortar restaurant but also prohibits anyone from operating a food truck at all unless he or she also already owns a brick-and-mortar restaurant in the city. As a result, there are currently no food trucks licensed to operate in Evanston.

The Liberty Justice Center, or LJC, filed a lawsuit challenging Evanston’s food-truck ordinance on behalf of Beavers Coffee & Donuts in August 2012. Unlike San Antonio, Evanston has not admitted that its anti-competitive ordinance is indefensible but instead has dug in, forcing LJC and Beavers to spend years in costly litigation fighting the obviously improper law.

Chicago similarly prohibits food trucks from operating within 200 feet of a brick-and-mortar restaurant, with penalties of up to $2,000 per violation – 10 times higher than the fine for parking in front of a fire hydrant. The Institute for Justice filed a lawsuit challenging that provision in November 2012.

Like Evanston, and unlike San Antonio, Chicago has fought tooth-and-nail to defend its anti-competitive ordinance. The city’s attorneys have even tried to bully one food-truck owner who’s challenging the law by serving a subpoena on her sister, who lives more than 50 miles outside Chicago and has nothing to do with the food-truck business. Meanwhile, the city keeps harassing food truck operators who aren’t even violating the 200-foot rule.

Evanston and Chicago should look to San Antonio’s example and repeal their unconstitutional, anti-competitive restrictions on food trucks. It shouldn’t take a court order to get them to respect the Constitution’s limits on their power – or to look out for the public’s interests instead of restaurant owners’ profits.