Ventenbergs v. The City of Seattle
IJ Challenges Government Created Monopolies that Violate Civil Rights

Seattle’s trash industry uses government power to monopolize the industry and protect itself from competition. The Institute for Justice fought to break up this monopoly and restore the civil rights of all Washington entrepreneurs who simply want to earn an honest living free from discriminatory government regulation.

In 2001, the City of Seattle declared hauling construction waste from building sites illegal—unless the hauling was done by one of two large, politically connected corporations. The creation of this monopoly made illegal business conducted for years between Seattle entrepreneur Joe Ventenbergs, who owns a hauling business, and his Lynwood construction client, Ron Haider. IJ filed a lawsuit in 2003 challenging the City’s waste-hauling monopoly as an unconstitutional abridgement of economic liberty.

IJ litigated the case all the way up to the Washington Supreme Court, which, on February 21, 2008, upheld the monopoly, reasoning that the provision of waste hauling service is a “government service” to which constitutional protections do not apply. Three justices forcefully dissented, arguing that the City’s trash hauling monopoly was “a textbook example of governmental corporate favoritism to advance the profits of the privileged few at the expense, and the extinction, of any potential competitors.”

Notwithstanding the setback, IJ-WA will continue the fight for economic liberty in the Evergreen State and will not rest until the right of all Washingtonians to earn an honest living has been secured.