LA County judge tosses out taco truck restrictions

The hundreds of taco trucks that dot Los Angeles County and dish out cheap fast-food dishes such as carnitas, quesadillas and carne asada will be allowed to conduct business from set locations, a judge determined, throwing out a law requiring that the trucks move every hour.

Judge Dennis Aichroth also dismissed a citation issued to taco truck driver Margarita Garcia, who had faced the possibility of a $1,000 fine and six months in jail for violating the ordinance. Garcia was one of the first taco truck drivers cited after the county Board of Supervisors adopted the measure last spring.

"The court finds that the ordinance as written is too ambiguous to be enforceable," Aichroth said in his ruling Wednesday. He also said the county law appeared to conflict with the state's vehicle code.

The law was passed after restaurateurs complained that taco trucks parking on the streets near their businesses were drawing away customers and forcing some of them to the brink of bankruptcy. Although it affected only unincorporated sections of the county, not the city of Los Angeles itself, the area under the law's domain included the vast, largely Latino East Los Angeles neighborhood where many of the trucks operate.

A spokeswoman for Supervisor Gloria Molina, who introduced the ordinance, said the county would appeal.

"We feel this ordinance regulates quality-of-life issues, which are of ultimate importance to residents in our unincorporated areas," Molina spokeswoman Roxane Marquez said. "Our intent was not to put any catering trucks out of business but to ensure fairness to our residents — those who live in homes right in front of or across the street from where trucks do business everyday, all hours of the day or night."

The truck drivers, many of them immigrants or first-generation Hispanics, complained that they were unfairly singled out by the ordinance. They pointed out that they faced the same health requirements as restaurants and said they provided good, cheap food, often to a low-income clientele that couldn't afford restaurant dining.

"If you can't manage your restaurant business in a way so that you can compete with a taco truck, maybe you should find another business," attorney Phil Greenwald, who represented Garcia and other taco truck drivers, said after Aichroth's ruling.

Garcia, who operates a truck with her husband, Alejandro Valdovino, had joined other operators to fight the ordinance.

Greenwald estimated that three dozen drivers received citations. He said he expects those citations will be dismissed.

"This law hurt us. It favors some businesses over others, and makes a hardworking person into a delinquent," Valdovino, speaking in Spanish, said Wednesday.

The ordinance required that any vehicle from which "liquids or edibles" was sold be moved every 60 minutes from a commercial zone or every 30 minutes from a residential zone and that it not return to within a half-mile of its previous location for at least three hours. Drivers said the 30-minute requirement didn't really affect them because they don't park in residential neighborhoods but that the 60-minute rule would cripple business.

A previous law called for fining drivers as much as $60 for staying in one place more than 30 minutes. Many of those who were cited said the fines weren't significant enough to challenge so they simply paid them and chalked it up to the cost of doing business.

Last year, a permit crackdown in New York City threatened a decades-old tradition of vendors selling tacos, empanadas and other authentic Latin American food at Brooklyn's Red Hook Park soccer field.

But city officials announced in March amid a fierce campaign by New Yorkers to "save the soccer tacos" that the vendors could continue to serve up their fare under a revised permit system.

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Associated Press writer Raquel Maria Dillon contributed to this report.

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