Anubis and Ramses Avalos

Laura Pekarik

IJ client Laura Pekarik is an entrepreneurial dynamo who owns and operates the Cupcakes for Courage food truck.

Sally Ladd

Sally Ladd is a New Jersey-based entrepreneur who provides short-term vacation property management services in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains. But after Pennsylvania wanted her to obtain a real-estate broker’s license, which requires her to spend three years working for an established broker, Sally felt forced to shut down her business.

Mike Warfield

Fed up with Charleston’s endless series of trivial questions, Mike is standing up for his First Amendment right to talk to paying customers without first getting the government’s permission.

Jason and Jacki Wiebesick

Jason and Jacki have owned their property in Golden Valley, a suburb of Minneapolis, for decades. But the city hasn’t respected their tenants’ wishes and instead has tried to obtain unconstitutional “administrative” warrants to force its way inside.

Jane Astramecki

IJ client Jane Astramecki, a graduate of Le Cordon Bleu, runs a home baking business. But Minnesota’s restrictive cottage food law bans her from earning more than $5,000 a year and from selling her treats at venues other than farmers’ markets and community events.

Esteban Narez

Esteban Narez, 26, grew up in Watsonville, California with his mother and two sisters. Esteban withdrew from high school his senior year due to a major injury. He hasn’t been able to get a GED because the medical bills and his family’s finances have forced him to work full-time ever since. Esteban wants to train as a farrier, but California won’t let him.

Joey Vanoni

The owner and operator of the Pizza di Joey food truck, Joey is challenging Baltimore’s 300-foot rule because it threatens his lifelong dream of owning his own pizza business. He also believes that the city shouldn’t be limiting hungry Baltimoreans’ dining choices.

Flor Morency

Flor Morency is the mother of twin children, a boy and a girl, who have received scholarships through Nevada’s program. But in July, Morency was told that her children could no longer receive a scholarship because a new state law made it statistically impossible to grant scholarships to all renewing students.

Salamata Sylla

The Washington Department of Licensing ordered IJ client Salamata Sylla to obtain a time-consuming and irrelevant cosmetology license for hair braiding. IJ sued on her behalf and forced the Department to adopt a rule exempting braiders.

Heather Kokesch Del Castillo

Heather Kokesch Del Castillo is a health coach in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, who joined with the Institute for Justice to defend her First Amendment right to give dietary advice.

Robert and Rebecca McCaughtry

Under Red Wing, Minn.’s rental inspection ordinance, it is easier for the government to force its way into the homes of law-abiding citizens than it is to search the home of a suspected criminal.  Robert and Rebecca joined a lawsuit to stop these unreasonable and intrusive inspections of their private residential properties.

Bill Campbell

Bill Campbell is a landlord in Granite City, Illinois. He joined his tenants in filing a lawsuit to shutdown the city’s compulsory-evictions law.

Troy and Angela Nelson

Troy and Angela Nelson operate a small family farm in Palermo, Maine. They have two children, Alicia, who attends a nonreligious school, and Royce, who attends Temple Academy, a private, Christian school. Palermo won’t pay for Royce’s tuition, simply because he attends a religious school, even though its pays tuition for Alicia.

Tina Barnes

Tina was elected to the Charlestown City Council to represent the Pleasant Ridge neighborhood. If forced out by the city, Tina, her daughter and granddaughters will all be homeless.

Reaching Our Sisters Everywhere, Inc

Founded in 2011, ROSE is an Atlanta-based, nonprofit organization that works to increase access to breastfeeding support and improve healthcare equity among African-American communities in Georgia and around the country.