A mobile art gallery owner is suing a North Carolina town over a local ordinance that forces itinerant vendors like her to give 100 percent of profits to charity in exchange for the right to sell during the high tourism season.
Ami Hill is the proprietor of mobile art gallery #Bus252 and of the Muse Markets, which features work from local artists and artisans.
Hill is suing the town of Kill Devil Hills in the vacation mecca of the Outer Banks over the ordinance that is in effect every year from May 1 to Sept. 30.
When the pandemic disrupted commerce in 2020, Hill moved her brick-and-mortar art gallery into the refurbished school vehicle that became her mobile art bus.
Although she has been welcomed in many other communities in the state, the ordinance prevents her from exercising her constitutional rights and earning a living in her hometown of Kill Devil Hills.
The town “forces Ami to surrender the entirety of the fruits of her labor when she operates the art market, and it allows her to keep her profits from her art bus only during the least lucrative times of the year,” according to the legal complaint.
Hill has brought “this lawsuit to vindicate the Constitution’s promise that she be allowed to earn an honest living free from arbitrary and unnecessary government interference.”
According to Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), a national public interest law representing the plaintiff, vendors can seek a permit to operate from the local board of commissioners, but this requires her to “undergo an arbitrary and unduly burdensome process each time” she wants to sell.
“This puts itinerant vendors between a proverbial rock and a hard place,” PLF adds.
To make things worse, the town has created a First Flight Market, which features itinerant sellers and local artists in direct competition with Hill’s Muse Market.
The only distinction between the two markets is that the town-sponsored vendors can sell year-round and keep their profits.
The town also rejected #Bus252’s application to participate in First Flight Market, whose name reflects its proximity to historic Kitty Hawk, site of the first successful, sustained, powered flights in a heavier-than-air machine in 1903.
PLF attorney Donna Matias told The Epoch Times the town “cannot condition an itinerant vendor’s right to earn a living on surrendering profits or going to the board of commissioners for permission each time they want to sell.”
“Ami and business owners like her have a right to the fruits of their labor under the North Carolina Constitution,” she said.
Matias said her clients decided to sue in state court because North Carolina “is the only state that has this fruits-of-their-own-labor provision, which expressly protects the right to earn an honest living.”
Ultimately, what it comes down to is Kill Devil Hills wants to “protect the brick-and-mortar businesses,” the lawyer said.
Matias speculated about how the dispute could be resolved.
“What she wants is the ability to be able to earn a living and in her town, without this certain scheme that makes it impossible.
“There are other towns–she can work in Kitty Hawk–she’s allowed to set up in surrounding towns, and each one has a different sort of set of rules.”
But the Kill Devil Hills ordinance “is certainly the most restrictive,” she said.
The town could completely repeal the ordinance or structure it so it deals with “whatever it is that they’re concerned about, although protecting brick-and-mortar stores is not a legitimate government concern.”
“But if they’re concerned about traffic and safety and crowds, fine, then you write a law that addresses that concern,” instead of targeting a particular class of people,” Matias said.
The Epoch Times reached out for comment to Casey Varnell, the town’s attorney.
Varnell said by email on June 7 that the town had not yet been served with the legal complaint and that he would comment after reviewing it.
As of press time June 8, no comment had yet been received.
