Will Todd Greenburg appeal this one?  Judy Stearns was the ONLY alderman to vote with Julie Crowe.  http://www.cityblm.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=2464

All of these alderman voted AGAINST free market capitalism:  

Mwilambwe, Schmidt, McDade, Anderson, Fazzini, Sage, Fruin
and Purcell.

This is also a BIG defeat for David Hales because he initially ruled against her at a hearing.   She appealed to the entire Council who also rejected her, except for Judy Stearns.  She had to file a lawsuit against the City just to start a business!

MEDIA ALERT

from the LIBERTY JUSTICE CENTER

Media contact: Daniel Anthony 312-607-4977 or [email protected]

Case documents available online at: http://illin.is/1a6GObN

Court recognizes Bloomington entrepreneur’s right to pursue her business

BLOOMINGTON, Ill., Aug. 30, 2013 – More than two years after she applied to the city of Bloomington for a license to operate a van service, Julie Crowe will be allowed to start her business and exercise her right to earn a living.

In a victory for liberty and entrepreneurship in Illinois, Judge Rebecca Foley of the McLean County Circuit Court struck down a provision of Bloomington’s vehicle-for-hire ordinance that allowed the city to keep newcomers such as Crowe out of the market to protect established companies from competition.

“A city cannot enact a law for the sole purpose of protecting a special-interest group from competition,” said Jacob Huebert, an attorney with the Liberty Justice Center of the Illinois Policy Institute, a public interest litigation center, which represented Crowe. “The judge recognized that Bloomington had no legitimate reason to exclude entrepreneurs like Ms. Crowe from competing in Bloomington’s vehicle-for-hire market and struck down the law for violating the Illinois Constitution.”

The judge also ruled that the law was unconstitutionally vague and arbitrary because it established no objective standards for deciding who receives a vehicle-for-hire certificate.

“The judge struck down the law because your right to earn a living shouldn’t depend on a government official’s personal preference,” Huebert said. “This decision says that if the government is going to issue licenses for starting a business, the standards it applies must be clear, objective and fair.”

Additionally, the court ruled that Bloomington lacked fair procedures for its hearings for vehicle-for-hire applications and had no evidence to support its stated reasons for denying Crowe’s application.

This decision sends a message to local governments across Illinois that officials can’t deny an individual his or her right to earn a living in order to protect politically privileged businesses from competition.

Media contact: Daniel Anthony 312-607-4977 or [email protected]

The Liberty Justice Center is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public-interest litigation center of the Illinois Policy Institute. It fights to protect economic liberty, private property rights, free speech, and other fundamental rights in Illinois and beyond.  First and foremost, the Liberty Justice Center seeks to ensure that the rights to earn a living and to start a business, which are essential to a free and prosperous society, are available not just to a politically privileged few, but to all.  The Liberty Justice Center pursues its goals through strategic, precedent-setting litigation to revitalize constitutional restraints on government power and protections for individual rights. To learn more about the Liberty Justice Center, visit: http://libertyjusticecenter.org