Restaurant Association challenges Chicago's Nanny State

Crain's Chicago Business reports:

When our founding fathers gave Congress the power to regulate commerce, they must have been thinking — fattened liver???

That, at least, is the argument of the Illinois Restaurant Assn., which Monday amended its lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court challenging Chicago’s ordinance against restaurants serving foie gras.

That ban oversteps the city’s authority and violates the Constitution, the complaint alleges, by interfering with the free flow of goods between states.

Foie gras is made from the liver of force-fed ducks and geese. The Chicago City Council banned restaurants from serving the delicacy with an ordinance that went into effect in August.


“If every local, county or state government were free to adopt legislation banning the local sale of products because they did not like something about the perceived political, economic, social or moral conditions under which those products were elsewhere lawfully produced, and then justified those bans on the ground that local sale presented a local moral concern or impaired the local ‘reputation,’ the impact on interstate and foreign commerce would be enormous,” the complaint says.

The Illinois Restaurant Assn. filed its original lawsuit asking the court to void the ordinance, arguing that because foie gras isn’t produced in Chicago, the Illinois Constitution doesn’t allow Chicago to ban its sale. On Nov. 3 the city asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit, saying it’s allowed to pass laws that protect its “image and reputation.”

Imagine that,Chicago worried about its' reputation.No word yet from William Hanhardt on Chicago's reputation.