Constitutionality of City Ordinance
Tuesday, October 14th, 2014
This action involves the constitutionality of a city ordinance regulating beer sales by establishments operating twenty-four hours a day. In 2006, the City of Chattanooga amended its beer ordinance, providing that no establishment remaining open for business of any type between the hours of 3:00am and 8::00am is permitted to simultaneously maintain a beer permit. The plaintiff restaurant is located within a Chattanoogan hotel and serves a variety of food items 24-hours per day. The restaurant also served beer during the hours allowed under the unamended version of the code until it received a letter alleging a code violation from the Chattanooga Police Department. Upon hearing, the restaurant lost its license.
Plaintiff brought this action in the trial court, alleging that the city code violated the restaurant’s due process rights pursuant to the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution and Article 1, Section 8 of the Tennessee Constitution. The trial court ruled in favor of the city, finding that the code subsection was rationally related to a legitimate government interest. On appeal, the Court of Appeals found that the code was not rationally related to a legitimate government interest, thereby reversing the judgment of the trial court. More specifically, the court found that “An amendment forcing establishments such as G & N to choose between providing twenty-four-hour food service without a beer permit and operating during specific times for the privilege of selling beer during permissible hours imposes arbitrary limits on those establishments, the parameters of which are not a reasonable exercise of a municipality’s police power.”
G and N Restaurant Group, Inc. d/b/a City Cafe Diner v. City of Chattanooga, E2013-02617-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Oct. 8, 2014)