IJ clients Stanley Hambrick (above) and Larry Miller (below) are two well-known vendors outside Turner Field.
	Download: Streets of Dreams: How Cities Can Create Economic Opportunity by Knocking Down Protectionist Barriers to Street Vending

For generations, street vending has been a classic way to succeed with only a strong work ethic and a desire to succeed.  It is a path that cities should encourage, particularly in these tough economic times.  But rather than fostering entrepreneurship and opportunity, Atlanta tried to do its best to smother it.

Larry Miller and Stanley Hambrick own two well-known vending businesses outside the Atlanta Braves stadium.  Their businesses create jobs, offer inexpensive snacks and souvenirs to visitors, and make the sidewalks safer by keeping an eye out for fans who need help.  But in 2009, the City of Atlanta handed over all public-property vending to a single company—the first program of its kind in the country.  In the first phase of the program, approximately 16 vending businesses shut down, costing dozens of people their jobs.  The company planned to roll out Phase II outside the Braves stadium, which would have thrown Larry and Stanley out of the spots they have worked for decades to build kiosks that rent for almost $20,000 a year.  Had it succeeded, Larry and Stanley’s businesses would have been destroyed.

Unfortunately, many American cities put up roadblocks that keep would-be vendors from climbing that ladder.  In Streets of Dreams, the Institute for Justice reviewed vending laws in America’s 50 largest cities.  It found that of those 50 cities, 45 have one or more anticompetitive restrictions on vending.  Atlanta has some of the most onerous burdens in the country, and the monopoly Atlanta created cost vendors their jobs and threatened to kill vending as a way for ordinary Atlantans to succeed.

To protect the economic liberty of all Georgians, Larry and Stanley joined with the Institute for Justice to challenge Atlanta’s vending monopoly.  In a lawsuit filed on July 28, 2011 in the Superior Court for Fulton County, Georgia, the Institute for Justice argued that Atlanta did not have the power to grant an exclusive vending franchise and that its actions violated the Georgia constitution. 

The court agreed, holding on December 21, 2012 that Atlanta had exceeded its authority in handing one company the exclusive right to vend on public property.  That decision became final the following month when the city chose not to appeal the loss.  This victory by IJ has freed Atlanta’s vending community and will force other cities to think twice before entering into similarly anticompetitive arrangements.