Should farmers get thrown in jail for 90 days and hit with $1,000 in fines for engaging in free trade?
Unfortunately, that’s the law in Lake Elmo, Minnesota.
And that is why the farmers are fighting back. Tuesday they rallied [check out the pictures here], coming from around the state to secure their constitutional rights. Yesterday, the Institute for Justice–the libertarian law firm that defends economic liberty nationwide–took the farmers’ case to federal court.
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On December 1, 2009, the city council in Lake Elmo–a rural city just outside St. Paul–decided that it would begin enforcing a law that makes it illegal for farmers to sell products from their own land unless they were grown within Lake Elmo.
The city’s politicians argue that they are protecting Lake Elmo’s rural character. In fact, they are destroying that character by making it impossible for their farmers to earn an honest living and increasing the likelihood that family farms will fail.
Consider Richard Bergmann.
Richard and his wife Eileen have farmed in Lake Elmo for nearly 40 years. They work together with their three grown children. Part of their family farm extends beyond city limits, and that part is actually where they grow most of their pumpkins. And now it’s a crime to sell those pumpkins in Lake Elmo.
In order to keep their business afloat, Richard and Eileen need to add to their inventories with pumpkins and Christmas trees grown on different farms, so they regularly engage in free trade with farmers around the country.
Tuesday, the Lake Elmo city council got together and decided to change their draconian law…for the worse. They deleted a provision in the city code that made it legal for farmers like the Bergmanns to sell products they grow on their own property at a different location in Lake Elmo.
The change will mean that Richard and Eileen won’t even be able to sell products that they grow just across the street without facing fines and threats of jail. The change is a cosmetic adjustment that does not fix the underlying problem: Farmers cannot engage in free trade.
Thankfully, the U.S. Constitution was crafted to guarantee the right to earn an honest living free from unreasonable government regulations. Lake Elmo is violating the American founding ideals of economic liberty and free trade by forbidding farmers from selling non-Lake Elmo products on their farms.
In May, the Institute for Justice teamed up with the Bergmanns and their trading partners from around the country in a major federal lawsuit designed to strike down Lake Elmo’s free trade ban as a violation of the U.S. Constitution. At yesterday’s hearing, the Institute asked a federal judge to prevent the city from prosecuting the Bergmanns until the lawsuit is settled.
The suit has already received national media attention, and the farmers, working together with the Institute for Justice, will not stop fighting until their right to economic liberty has been vindicated.
For more on the lawsuit, click here.
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