Philadelphia Punished Small Businesses for Opposing Curfew, Say Food Truck Owners

Regulatory power is all too often abusively targeted.

One of the many downsides of government regulation of business is that rules can be enforced in ways that satisfy their alleged purpose, or they can be used selectively and abusively to punish entrepreneurs who offend officials. In many cases, without open threats, business owners have a good idea that the bureaucracy has been weaponized to push them to fall into line in ways that please the powerful. That's the case with food truck owners in Philadelphia who found that inspectors took a special interest in them after they publicly opposed a new business curfew.

Closing Businesses and Fomenting Opposition

In 2024, Democratic Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker signed into law a bill that "requires businesses without liquor licenses located between Kensington and Frankford venues and Lehigh Avenue and Tioga Street to close at night from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m."

"In order to get control of the neighborhood, we need to temporarily limit after hour operation for the businesses in this neighborhood," insisted Democratic City Councilmember Quetcy Lozada, who cited public safety and quality of life concerns.

But temporary turned out to be anything but when Parker this month allowed the curfew to be continued and extended beyond its original boundaries. The Institute for Justice (I.J.), which partnered with businesses opposed to the curfew, estimates the newly restricted area to be roughly 500 percent larger than the old one. Penalties for violations doubled from $500 to $1,000 per day.

Lozada claimed her target was "nuisance businesses," including unlicensed smoke shops and storefronts with gambling machines that, allegedly, encourage crime. But food trucks have been especially affected by the curfew since they're highly visible and do much of their business with night-shift workers and bar patrons. Lozada seems to have a special grudge against truck owners, telling the Philadelphia Inquirer, "Every single one of them had been breaking the law for a long time."

The law they're breaking is a preexisting statute that theoretically requires food trucks to operate only between 7am and midnight. But, the Inquirer's Zoe Greenberg and Michelle Myers point out, "in practice, many food trucks have operated overnight for years without consequence because the Department of Licenses and Inspections carries out inspections during the day shift."

Regulators Retaliate Against Critics

That means the new curfew and its aggressive enforcement upset a long-established environment and threaten to put food trucks out of business. So, the Latino Food Truck Association joined with the I.J. to oppose the curfew extension. And that, they say, is when city officials started to retaliate.

"Last Thursday, two food truck owners—5th Street Super Food Truck owner Edward Bonilla and Alta Cocina Food Truck owner Jose Luis—spoke to Philadelphia City Council in opposition to the city's expanded business curfew law, which requires many businesses in city council districts 7,8, and parts of district 1 to close between the hours of 11 p.m. and 6 a.m.," I.J.'s Dan King wrote this week. "A few hours after their testimony, law enforcement and city licensing officials showed up at the businesses, demanding licenses and registrations from all food trucks in the vicinity." King added that the city also sent inspectors after both businesses and nearby food trucks just days after they spoke out against the bill in late April.

"This timing is impossible to ignore," I.J. warned in a letter to city officials. "If, as the timing suggests, these enforcement actions were taken because of the food truck owners' speech, then the enforcement actions are blatantly unconstitutional, and the Institute for Justice demands that the City refrain from further retaliatory conduct."

The letter went on to instruct Philadelphia officials to preserve all communications related to the inspection raids in a clear sign of legal action to come.

Philadelphia officials haven't admitted that the raids were punishment for the entrepreneurs' outspoken opposition to the curfew. But when enforcers begin showing up every time you open your mouth, the message comes through loud and clear.

Despite Lozada's insistence that shutting many businesses after 11 p.m. would improve the quality of life for Philadelphians, the opposite may be true. According to a May 2025 Inquirer report, violent crime in the councilmember's district "is up by 40% for the year to date compared to last year" just over a year after the curfew was implemented. Requiring businesses to close early may make streets less safe.

Jawboning and the Abusive Regulatory State

The abuse of government regulatory power to get private parties to do what politicians want, or to refrain from doing what politicians dislike, is all too common and very dangerous. It's sometimes called "jawboning" which, as Will Duffield wrote for the Cato Institute in 2022, "occurs when a government official threatens to use his or her power—be it the power to prosecute, regulate, or legislate—to compel someone to take actions that the state official cannot."

Constitutional protections prevent American government officials from overtly censoring their critics. But they can use their regulatory power to make life uncomfortable through inspections, audits, withheld approvals, and the like. Given the extent to which so much of what we do requires government permission these days, even the implied threat of bureaucratic difficulties can be enough.

Jawboning was at work when the Biden administration leaned on social media companies to suppress criticism of administration policies and inconvenient stories about the then-president's son. It appears to have also been at work this week when ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel's late-night show after the head of the Federal Communications Commission suggested the network could lose its license over the comic's nutty political musings.

It's not always clear that private parties are being jawboned, or just careful to avoid offending powerful people in fear of retaliation, or if they're taking advantage of pressure to do something they wanted to do anyway. But that's never going to be obvious so long as government officials wield so much authority, because the threat is real and power is often abused.

That's a good argument against an all-pervasive regulatory state that can be selectively and abusively targeted. So long as such power exists, food truck owners—and the rest of us—will have good reason to fear when inspectors show up every time we criticize government officials.