Girl Scouts Told to Close Driveway Cookie Stand

I’m not a big fan of the Girl Scouts of America, because I think the organization — at least on the national level — has skewed far to the left since the days, decades ago, when my older sisters wore the uniforms with green sashes. Still, I felt obligated to share the story below which, in my view, constitutes an assault on individual freedom.

Each February and March for the past six years, Caitlin Mills, 16, and Abigail Mills, 14, have put a card table in front of their home in Hazelwood, Mo., and sold Girl Scout cookies to drivers passing by. This year, however, city officials in the St. Louis suburb notified their mother, Carolyn Mills, that the girls’ cookie stand violated city ordinances and must be shut down.

According to a recent news release from Freedom Center of Missouri, the Mills family — but not the Girl Scouts of America as they are not involved in the case — filed suit in state court to ensure that children in Hazelwood and all over the state will be free to set up similar stands in their own front yards.

“It is a time-honored tradition for American children to set up a stand in the front yard and sell lemonade or baked goods to people passing by,” said Dave Roland, Freedom Center of Missouri director of litigation. “These stands are not only a fun way to pass a summer afternoon, they are frequently children’s first encounter with the basics of entrepreneurship, customer service, and money management.”

Notice of the city’s move to shut down the cookie-selling stand came as a surprise to Mrs. Mills.

“It never even crossed my mind that my girls might need to get permission from the city before setting up their cookie stand,” she said. “I was even more shocked when city officials told me that you couldn’t even get a permit for it.”

Caitlin Mills was diplomatic about the situation.

“We know that our city officials are working hard to make sure that Hazelwood is a nice place to live,” she explained. “But even good city officials sometimes make mistakes. All we are asking is for the court to say it was a mistake for the city to tell us to shut down our cookie stand.”

The implications of this case, however, reach far beyond Hazelwood’s city limits, according to Roland:

For more than a century, American courts adhered to the principle that people could use their property almost any way they saw fit as long as they were not harming anyone else. Despite this general rule, courts allowed governments to use the “police power” to create laws carefully designed to protect the public health, safety, and welfare. Over time, however, courts shifted from the presumption that citizens should be able to make use of their property to a presumption that government should be able to restrict its use. The issue in this case is whether state and local governments still face any constitutional limitations on their ability to control the use of private property.

“Courts have already held that cities can control what citizens can build on their property, where they can build it… even what color they can paint it,” Roland said. “If Hazelwood and other cities can prohibit kids from setting up a harmless, temporary cookie stand in their own front yard, it is hard to say that our constitutions still offer any significant protection for private property rights.

“The Freedom Center of Missouri hopes to remind the courts that vigorous protection of property rights is vital to the American constitutional system and way of life.”

Local governments that follow the Hazelwood example are, I dare say, walking a thin mint line and putting themselves in harm’s way when the next election day approaches.