Fontana’s ordinances regulating street vending, one of which has been in place since 2019 and the most recently revised of which has been in place for a 21-month duration, are being challenged in federal court based upon novel constitutional challenges of the municipal authority to license and control local businesses that have evolved in California for well over a century.
Fontana’s first effort to regulate street/sidewalk vending, in the form of Ordinance 1789, was approved by the city council in 2019.
Over the course of two meetings in October and November 2023, the Fontana City Council, gave first and second readings and both preliminary and final approval on identical 4-to-1 votes to a revamped set of street/sidewalk vending regulations, Ordinance 1925. The discussion took place in a fiery atmosphere in which four members of the city council, sympathetic to the challenges faced by traditional brick-and-mortar businesses and restaurants and those concerned about specific public health considerations, were challenged by the advocates for mobile and transitory businesses, such as sidewalk vendors, street vendors and food truck operators.
Those lobbying the council on behalf of the street and sidewalk vendors, who employed excessively aggressive tactics which included efforts to intimidate and physically assault operators of local businesses and members of the Fontana Area and Hispanic chambers of commerce who were encouraging the city council to adopt the ordinance, filed to achieve their goal. Ultimately, nine individuals, most of them residents from outside of Fontana, were arrested as the result of what the Fontana Police Department said were illegal protests mounted on the street where Fontana Mayor Acquanetta Warren lived after the meetings and in the ordinance’s opponents’ expletive-laced verbal encounters with others present in the council chamber and the parking lot at City Hall when the final approval of the ordinance took place.
Relying upon the sidewalk vending authority municipalities are granted under them by Senate Bill 946, including Government Code section 51038, the Fontana City Council passed an ordinance which augmented the city’s previously-adopted ordinance relating to “sidewalk vending,” giving code compliance officers or inspectors, police officers, firefighters, fire prevention specialists or examiners authority to impound a sidewalk vendor’s vending cart, equipment, food and/or merchandise if a vendor selling food does not have or display a valid health permit or if a seller of merchandise does not possess a valid applicable sidewalk vending permit and a city business license. Food or merchandise can also, under the ordinance, be confiscated if the vendor, the vendor’s cart, goods or equipment obstruct private or public property, if the goods or merchandise are left unattended for more than 30 minutes, if the merchandise and cart prevent there being a minimum of forty-eight inches of accessible path of travel on the sidewalk or if the items being sold create an imminent and substantial danger to the public. The ordinance confers upon the city “disposal authorization,” allowing officials to immediately dispose of impounded items that are perishable and/or cannot be safely stored. The ordinance authorizes the city to “dispose of any seized items held by the city for not less than 30 days from the date of impoundment.”
Upon passing the ordinance’s first reading, on October 10, 2023, the city council voted unanimously to approve a six-month $598,224 contract with 4Leaf Inc. for the provision of “additional contracted code compliance inspectors to address non-permitted street vendors” and enforce the ordinance.
The following month, in November 2023, the council tweaked the sidewalk and street vendor regulations, imposing a $232 impound fee on vendors seeking to have their merchandise returned passed by a vote of 4-to-1, with Mayor Acquanetta Warren and councilmen John Roberts, Phil Cothran Jr. and Pete Garcia prevailing and Jesse Sandoval dissenting.
On August 11, 2025 a lawsuit, Public Counsel on behalf of the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice filed suit in United States District Court for the Central District of California in Riverside, seeking to overturn what it referred to as Fontana’s “unlawful, unconstitutional practices.”
According to Javier Hernandez, the executive director at the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, “California’s streets are vibrant and more alive because of street vendors, immigrant and working-class entrepreneurs who turn sidewalks into spaces of connection, culture, and opportunity. At the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, we have been on the ground working to end harassment and criminalization of street vendors. We have seen the harm escalate as Fontana pushes them out unlawfully, creating a crisis for families who rely on vending to survive. We are fighting back because protecting vendors means protecting our history, our local economy, and our community’s future.”
Legal action was the only way, Hernandez said, “to protect the rights of low-income street vendors.”
According to the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, Fontana’s anti-vending ordinances require street vendors to maintain expensive multi-million dollar insurance policies – which are not required of brick-and-mortar businesses selling the same goods – as well as to undergo background checks each year.
The hoops that street and sidewalk vendors are forced to jump through in Fontana are “expensive and unlawful requirements,” according to the coalition. “Fontana is working with a third-party contractor that harasses vendors, often confiscating their carts and equipment, and throwing away their food and supplies, according to the coalition. “The city has made the situation even worse by making it a crime to ‘interfere with enforcement in any way,’ punishable by up to six months imprisonment, and by setting a minimum hold of 30 days on any confiscated property. Fontana’s ordinances violate California laws, which decriminalize and legalize street vending statewide.”
According to the coalition, “The city’s actions have resulted in hundreds of confiscations of food and goods, and more than 80 instances of impounded equipment, causing financial and emotional harm to dozens of street vendors. Additionally, very few vendors have been able to obtain vending licenses in the city due to its onerous and unlawful permitting requirements.”
“Me da tristeza…no escuchan lo que uno dice…tiran la comida, llegan ellos haci hasta con la policía…a mi me duele mucho…” said Angelina Matias, a vendor. “Tiran todo lo que yo vendo. Yo gasto dinero y después voy a luchar otra vez para ir a comprar esas cosas, la comida que me están tirando.”
[“It makes me sad… they don’t listen to what we say… they throw away food, they even bring the police… It hurts me a lot…,” said Angelina Matias, a vendor. “They throw away everything I sell. I spend money, and then I have to struggle again to buy those things, the food they’re throwing away.”]
The lawsuit seeks a permanent injunction preventing Fontana from enforcing what the coalition’s lawyers characterized as the “unlawful” portions of its ordinances, which would allow street vendors to go back to work on city sidewalks.
“Fontana’s blatantly unlawful actions have caused dozens of vendors severe financial and emotional harm,” said Ritu Mahajan Estes, Directing Attorney of Public Counsel’s Community Development Project. “We not only want Fontana to stop, we want to send a clear message to other California cities that they cannot unlawfully restrict vending, make decisions based on racial bias, and favor certain types of businesses. We must do all we can, particularly in this political climate, to protect, encourage, and support street vendors in our communities, not alienate, punish, and drive them out.”
In addition to Estes, the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, as the plaintiff, is represented by attorneys Mattew T. Heartney, Daniel Shimell, and Dania Qahoush of the law firm of Arnold & Porter Kay Scholer and Public Counsel attorneys, Sophia Wrench, Cassidy Bennett, Elizabeth Brown and Jacob Maddox.
Notefully, Public Counsel cites Senate Bill 946, which the city quoted as its authority in setting up the sidewalk/street vending ordinance, as the grounds for its lawsuit.
The suit states, “In 2018, recognizing the significance of sidewalk vending to ‘promot[ing] entrepreneurship and support[ing] immigrant and low-income communities,’ the California Legislature passed Senate Bill No. 946 (“SB-946”), adopting state-wide standards safeguarding vendors against discriminatory local regulation and requiring local governments to treat vendors as a legitimate part of the state’ s economy. In 2022, Senate Bill No. 972 (“SB-972”) followed, ending the treatment of sidewalk vendors selling food as a misdemeanor offense and creating a new category for vendors – ‘compact mobile food operation[s]’ – in the state’s Retail Food Code.”
According to the lawsuit, the city’s Ordinance 1925 “contravenes sidewalk vendors’ rights under the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments, is preempted by the State of California’s statutory enactments, and greatly undercuts plaintiff’s mission. singles out sidewalk vendors, mandating onerous permitting requirements that go far beyond what the city requires of other small businesses.”
Part of the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice’s mission is to represent the interest of those involved in street and sidewalk vending.
Named as defendants in the suit are the City of Fontana, its city council, Mayor Acquanetta Warren, Deputy City Manager Phillip Burum, the City of Fontana’s code compliance department, 4Leaf, Inc. 4Leaf Vice president Craig Tole and 4Leaf Director of Code Enforcement Pete Roque.
According to the law suit, “[T]he city has paid $645,000 or more to retain an outside contractor, 4Leaf Inc. (“4Leaf”), to enforce its new and existing regulations, and agreed to allow 4Leaf personnel to ‘operate independently’ in carrying out its enforcement activities. Unconstrained by significant city oversight, 4Leaf agents have since conducted a lawless campaign to harass, intimidate, and ultimately coerce vendors to abandon their rights and leave the city. Repeatedly, 4Leaf agents confiscate vendors’ property without giving vendors any notice or an opportunity to be heard. Through its unlawful enactments and its agents’ implementation thereof, the city has succeeded in expelling – or at least greatly restricting, through intimidation – a majority of its vending population.”
According to the suit, “To end these irreparable harms, plaintiff seeks a determination by the Court (a) declaring that the challenged provisions of ordinances 1789 and 1925 are unconstitutional, unlawful, and preempted by the express terms of SB-946 and SB 972, and (b) enjoining the city and its personnel and 4Leaf and its operatives from implementing or enforcing the challenged provisions. Fontana’s escalating attacks on sidewalk vendors have had severe consequences – a large number of the vendors previously operating there have left the city and not returned to date.”
The suit maintains that “other cities across California… look to Fontana as the playbook for eliminating street vendors from their city with impunity. “
The ordinances force street and sidewalk vendors, according to the lawsuit, to “obtain a local vending permit,” which entails “(a) The purchase of a costly insurance policy that includes multi-million dollar coverage provisions (ranging from $1 million to $2 million per occurrence) purportedly needed to protect the city; (b) Yearly purchases of a LiveScan background check by the California Department of Justice intended to monitor sidewalk vendors’ purported “risks to children” when operating in public areas; and (c) Vendors’ agreement to utilize public sidewalks ‘at [their] own risk’ and without any steps by the city ‘to ensure public property is safe or conducive to sidewalk vending.’ These onerous and unlawful requirements, which the city does not require for other small businesses operating in its jurisdiction, have contributed significantly to local sidewalk vendors’ unwillingness to apply for a local vending permit.”
According to the lawsuit, “By 2023, city officers reportedly ‘confiscated [vendors’] perishable goods over 400 times,’” and comments from the city’s community meetings confirm such confiscations. The City’s utilization of Ordinance 1789, § 15-828 to seize sidewalk vendors’ property is unlawful. Even putting aside the Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment issues, vendors’ perishable goods seized by the city clearly have not been used ‘as evidence’ as required by the text of the provision itself. Instead, after the city’s officers have seized the vendors’ goods, they discarded those goods without using them for any evidentiary purposes. The sidewalk vendors thereby lost their valuable merchandise for no lawful purpose, with no opportunity to be heard and no recompense.”
It would appear that the rubber is going to meet the road when the city and the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice get to litigating the case, thereby testing the proposition that the city’s ordinances indeed violate the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments, that the ordinance is preempted by the Senate Bills 946 and 972 by singling out sidewalk vendors with onerous permitting requirements and “goes far beyond what the city requires of other small businesses.” While the lawsuit stands as an admirable effort toward advocacy of a subset of the business community, those being entrepreneurs who do not operate from a specified and permanent location in a “brick-and-mortar” setting, there are elements to that advocacy that gloss over or misrepresent the degree to which operators of traditional businesses functioning out of a specific location are subjected to what the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice’s lawyers refer to as onerous regulation.
A case can be made that the owners of traditional business establishments functioning out of a specific location are far more vulnerable to governmental regulation than those whose business model allows them to depart for another location at literally a minute’s notice.
The lawsuit makes an issue of the city’s code enforcement division or 4Leaf preempting the function of the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health in carrying out inspections of operations involving the sale of food to the public. This ignores that the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health has developed a reliable and accurate list of brick-and-mortar establishments which are subjected to unerring and regular inspections and that, by definition, the development of such a list for mobile operators – street or sidewalk vendors – is virtually impossible.
Moreover, the lawsuit asserts that one of SB-946’s provisions which consists of placing restrictions on the prohibition of sanctions for sidewalk vending violations to the imposition of administrative fines and that any “health, safety, or welfare concern” that a local government offers to justify a particular vendor restriction must be established by “objective” facts demonstrating that such restriction is necessary to address a “health, safety, or welfare” concern of significant importance to the public would preclude Fontana’s overreaching ordinances. Given the sidewalk vendors’ freedom of movement and ability to evade the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health at any time by simply closing up shop at any given time and leaving, it may prove difficult for the attorneys representing the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice to establish that the Fontana ordinance is not intended to address an objectively defined legitimated health, safety or welfare concern.
Estes acknowledged that the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice and its legal team may not be aiming at establishing in a court of law the technical accuracy of everything covered in the legal filing in federal court. “The goal of the lawsuit is really to get the city to put a stop to these ordinances,” she said.
The Inland Coaltion for Immigrant Justice constituent members are the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California (ACLU SoCal); the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI); the Catholic Diocese of San Bernardino; the United Domestic Workers of America (UDW); the Inland Empire Labor Council AFL-CIO (IELC); El Centro del Inmigrante; the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice (CCAEJ); the California Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance (CIYJA); the Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef); the Inland Congregations United for Change (ICUC); the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA); the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR-LA); the Canyon Children’s Legal Services (CCLS); the San Bernardino Community Service Center, Inc. (SBCSC); Hispanos Unidos; the United Food and Commercial Workers Western States Council 1167 (UFCW 1167); the Inland Empire Immigrant Youth Collective (IEIYC); the California Immigrant Policy Center (CIPC); the Pomona Economic Opportunity Center (PEOC); the Warehouse Worker Resource Center (WWRC); Gente Organizada; Alianza Coachella Valley (Alianza); Service Employees International Union 2015 (SEIU 2015); Social Justice Legal Foundation (SJLF); the People’s Collective for Environmental Justice Education Fund (PC4EJ); the Southern California Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health (SoCalCOSH); Vision y Compromiso (VyC); the Human Migration Institute (HMI); Nikkei Progressives (NP); Freedom for Immigrants (FFI); Anakbayan Inland Empire; Inland Empire United (IEU); and the Latino & Latina Roundtable of the San Gabriel Valley and Pomona Valley.
-Mark Gutglueck