The Jacksonville, NC food truck lawsuit ended in April 2026 with a superior court judge ruling that three food truck owners had prevailed on all their constitutional claims against the city, after Jacksonville had already repealed the challenged restrictions and chose not to appeal the final judgment.
The case was Proctor v. City of Jacksonville. It was filed in December 2022 by three business owners represented by the Institute for Justice, a national public-interest law firm.
What The Ordinance Restricted
Jacksonville’s Unified Development Ordinance placed three main limits on mobile food vendors.
The most sweeping was a 250-foot proximity rule. Food trucks could not operate within 250 feet of any property containing a brick-and-mortar restaurant, another food truck, or residential housing. The plaintiffs alleged this single provision put roughly 96 percent of Jacksonville off-limits.
The signage rules were narrower but distinctive. A food truck was allowed one 5-by-5-foot A-frame sign, placed within 20 feet of the vehicle, with no external lighting and no electronic displays. Other food businesses in town faced no comparable limits.
Permit fees ran $300 a year for city residents and $500 for non-residents. The lawsuit contended those numbers were calibrated to match the property tax burden of sit-down restaurants rather than the cost of regulating a food truck.
Who Sued And What They Wanted To Do
Anthony “Tony” Proctor, a Marine veteran and pastor, owns The Spot, a Florida-style seafood truck. Under the ordinance he could operate mainly at his own church, one of the few compliant locations, and often drove to Wilmington or New Bern to find customers.
Octavius “Ray” Raymond, also a Marine veteran, co-founded The Cheesesteak Hustle with his brother Isaac Foster. He could not set up in front of his own commissary kitchen because the site sat too close to residential-zoned property and other restaurants.
Nicole Gonzalez owns Northwoods Urban Farm, a property with a convenience store and tractor repair shop. She wanted to host multiple food trucks in her parking lot. The ordinance let her invite only one.
The Constitutional Claims
The Institute for Justice argued the rules violated four provisions of the North Carolina Constitution:
- The Fruits of Their Own Labor clause (Article I, Section 1), which protects the right to earn a living free from arbitrary regulation.
- The Law of the Land clause (Article I, Section 19), which requires that restrictions on lawful occupations serve a legitimate public purpose.
- Equal protection (Article I, Section 19), on the theory that food trucks were treated differently from bakeries, coffee shops, and other specialty food businesses selling similar products.
- Free speech (Article I, Section 14), targeting the signage limits that applied only to food trucks.
The plaintiffs also challenged the permit fees as ultra vires, meaning beyond the city’s legal authority because the amounts were not tied to actual regulatory costs.
The Court Of Appeals Reversal
A trial court initially dismissed the lawsuit. The plaintiffs appealed, and on December 3, 2024, a unanimous three-judge panel of the North Carolina Court of Appeals reversed and sent the case back for a full hearing.
Judge Jefferson Griffin, writing for the panel in Proctor v. City of Jacksonville (No. COA24-305), found the lower court had applied the wrong legal standards. Commercial speech restrictions required more than rational basis review. The plaintiffs had adequately alleged that the ordinance created “arbitrary and irrational distinctions” motivated by “unlawful economic protectionism.” And whether the permit fees were reasonably related to the cost of regulation was a factual question that could not be resolved on a motion to dismiss.
Jacksonville Repealed The Rules
With the case headed back to trial, the Jacksonville City Council voted unanimously on March 17, 2026, to repeal the three contested provisions.
The 250-foot buffer was eliminated. The separate signage rules for food trucks were scrapped, placing food trucks under the same general sign code as other businesses. The annual permit fee was cut from $300 or $500 down to $55.
The Institute for Justice did not drop the lawsuit. Attorneys Bob Belden and Robert Fellner said they wanted a ruling on the merits to prevent the city from re-enacting similar rules later. “This lawsuit was never just about Nicole, Tony, and Ray,” Belden said in a statement. “It was about making sure that North Carolinians won’t have their rights violated under similar circumstances in the future.”
The Final Ruling
The summary judgment hearing took place on March 23, 2026, in Onslow County Superior Court. Judge Robert Roupe announced from the bench that he would rule for the plaintiffs, and he issued a formal order on April 9, 2026, finding that they had “prevailed on all their claims for retrospective relief.”
The damages were nominal by design. The court awarded $4 to each plaintiff, one dollar per constitutional claim, and $15,861.56 to reimburse the plaintiffs’ lawyers for out-of-pocket costs. The point was the record: a judgment stating that the repealed provisions had been constitutionally deficient.
The city’s attorney, Lorna Welch, told the Jacksonville Daily News that the judge had dismissed the case as moot because the challenged provisions were already repealed, without ruling directly on their constitutionality. The Institute for Justice and the Carolina Journal described the order as a substantive win on the merits.
Jacksonville chose not to appeal. As of May 28, 2026, the judgment is final and the city has paid the damages and costs.
What It Means For Food Trucks In Jacksonville Now
Food trucks in Jacksonville no longer face a 250-foot buffer from restaurants, other trucks, or homes. Their signs are governed by the same rules that apply to other businesses. Annual permits cost $55.
The Jacksonville case is one of several the Institute for Justice has brought against local food truck restrictions through its National Street Vending Initiative, including an earlier North Carolina challenge to a Carolina Beach rule that required food truck operators to have owned a brick-and-mortar restaurant in town for at least a year. Carolina Beach repealed that requirement within a week of the 2018 filing.
IJ attorney Robert Fellner said the Jacksonville outcome was meant as a signal to other North Carolina municipalities. “The government is not allowed to restrict food trucks just because they might compete with their friends’ restaurants,” he said. “These laws don’t just hurt food truck owners, but they also restrict people from the freedom to choose where they can eat.”