Court Rules Citizens Don’t Have the Right to Grow Veggies on Their Own Properties


150 years ago growing a garden could be a matter of life and death. No one would have ever possibly suggested that growing vegetables was not a constitutionally protected right. But, today the thought of a family growing some non-gmo vegetables is just too much of a risk to public safety.

Apparently the right to feed yourself and your family is indeed not a fundamental one, as a Florida attorney previously declared.

A longstanding battle between 17-year homeowners at the Village of Miami Shores, Tom Carroll and Hermine Ricketts, appears to have reached its sad conclusion. In 2014, the couple was advised by town officials after a re-zoning plan that they would have to dig up their front-yard edible garden or face fines of $50 per day for the newly created infraction. The couple subsequently sued based on a constitutional infringement upon their right to use their own private property as well as a violation of the equal protection clause.

The Institute for Justice is calling this move a huge slap in the face to all homeowner’s constitutional rights.

Now, according to the Institute for Justice which had been representing the couple, Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal actually has agreed with the opposing attorney who stated: “There certainly is not [a] fundamental right to grow vegetables in your front yard.”

The Institute for Justice is rightly calling this “a major blow to property rights

UPDATE:

She (Hermine) reached out to Institute for Justice, a national advocacy group that fights for property rights, among other issues.

It took six years, but they won. An appeals court had ruled against Ricketts, but the Florida Legislature passed a bill protecting vegetable gardens, and last week Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it into law.

“After nearly six years of fighting … I will once again be able to legally plant vegetables in my front yard,” Ricketts said in a statement. “I’m grateful to the Legislature and the governor for standing up to protect my freedom to grow healthy food on my own property.”

She lamented that the fight even had to happen. “We had a beautiful, nutritious garden for many years before the Village went out of its way to ban it and then threatened us with ruinous fines,” she said.

Source: Activist Post



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