Beaver Donuts v. City of Evanston challenged city code that prohibited all food trucks in Evanston, except those operated by owners of existing brick-and-mortar establishments. The Liberty Justice Center challenged the city code on the grounds that it did not protect health, safety or welfare, but instead protected brick-and-mortar establishments from competition.

The excerpt below is from an article by Michael Gebert that appeared August 9, 2012, on Grub Street.

Evanston has generally seemed more hospitable to food trucks than Chicago— Evanston’s HummingBird Kitchen was the one truck that could run around actually cooking on board before the passage of the new Chicago food truck ordinance. But Evanston has its own quirky protectionist rules— and now one food truck is fighting them. Evanston’s rule is that food trucks have to be tied to an existing, brick and mortar business— as HummingBird Kitchen is an outgrowth of a local caterer. And to both Beavers Donuts and the Liberty Justice Center, a public interest litigation nonprofit focused on economic liberty and private property rights, that’s an even more obviously protectionist violation of equal protection guarantees under the Illinois constitution, barring an entire class of commerce to people who aren’t already engaged in another class of commerce— or as Jacob Huebert of the LJC puts it in everyday language, “The City is giving restaurant owners a special right that it won’t give to everyone else, for no legitimate reason.”

Read the full article on Grub Street.