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Erica Smith Ewing

Senior Attorney

Erica Smith Ewing serves as a senior attorney with the Institute for Justice. She joined the Institute in August 2011 and her work focuses on economic liberty, educational choice, free speech, and property rights.

Erica’s economic liberty work includes fighting for “food freedom,” which is the right of people to buy and sell the food of their choice. Erica has special expertise in cottage food laws, which allow people to sell food made in their home kitchen instead of paying tens of thousands of dollars to rent commercial kitchen space and apply for burdensome commercial food licenses.Erica successfully sued Wisconsin, New Jersey, North Dakota, and Minnesota to protect the rights of cottage food producers.  Erica also advises legislatures nationwide on cottage food reform and has helped several states improve their laws, including Kentucky, Maryland, Nebraska, New Mexico, West Virginia, and Wyoming. Erica also successfully sued in Washington to lift local restrictions on using “little free pantries” to feed the homeless.  Erica’s food freedom work has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning, CBS This Morning, NPR’s Morning Edition and in the New York Times and Bon Appétit.

Erica’s economic liberty work also fights unfair employment barriers for those with a criminal record. For instance, Erica recently challenged Pennsylvania’s requirement that would-be cosmetologists prove that they have “good moral character” before they can get a license to work. The court struck the law down as a violation of equal protection.

Erica protects the right of families to choose the education that best meets their children’s needs. Most recently, Erica and her colleague Dick Komer were lead counsel in the U.S. Supreme Court case, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, where the Court held that the government violates the Free Exercise Clause when it excludes religious schools and the families who want to attend them from a school choice program.  Erica was also lead counsel in Asociación de Maestros v. Departamento de Educación, where she successfully defended the constitutionality of Puerto Rico’s school voucher program at the territory’s supreme court. Likewise, Erica helped protect Georgia and New Hampshire’s tax-credit scholarship programs before each state’s supreme court.

Erica’s free speech work focuses on protecting commercial signs, political protest signs, and murals. She has successfully defended a family’s right to use signs to advertise its gym, a cowboy bar’s right to advertise using a mural,a video game store’s right to advertise using a 9-foot inflatable Mario, and a veteran-owned business’ right to protest the illegal taking of its land.

More recently, Erica has been focused on protecting property rights and fighting local zoning laws that interfere with those rights. Local zoning laws are the biggest reason for the housing crisis, and Erica fights laws that prevent people from using creative, private solutions to create affordable housing. She is currently litigating lawsuits in Idaho and Georgia about the right to live in tiny homes, and she successfully defended the right of a Utah motel owner to offer long-term leases to low-income residents. She also fights zoning laws that unfairly prevent home businesses, and recently won a lawsuit protecting a single mother’s right to have a home day care in Texas.

Before joining IJ in 2011, Erica served as a law clerk for the Honorable Terrence Boyle of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. Erica received her law degree cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 2010.

Erica's Cases

Educational Choice

Vermont Educational Choice

Vermont has one of the most robust school choice programs in the country, but there is one massive exception. The state does not provide the tuition benefit for parents who want to send their children…

First Amendment | Sign Codes

Norfolk, VA Sign

In a double blow to free speech and property rights, Norfolk, Va., tried not only to take a thriving business through its power of eminent domain but also censor a highly visible sign that protested…

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Erica's Research & Reports

New Data Show Homemade Food for Sale is Incredibly Safe

Food Freedom

New Data Show Homemade Food for Sale is Incredibly Safe

Is buying homemade food safe? New data from the Institute for Justice (IJ) show the answer to that question is a resounding “yes.” IJ contacted the seven states with the broadest homemade food laws (California,…

Erica's Amicus Briefs

Erica's Legislation

Home-Based Business and Occupation Act

Economic Liberty | Private Property | Zoning Justice Project

Home-Based Business and Occupation Act

The pre-COVID custom of Americans living in one place but working from another is historically unusual. As one scholar noted, “the phenomenon of leaving home to go to work did not become the norm until…

Food Freedom Act

Economic Liberty | Food Freedom

Food Freedom Act

Selling homemade food is a great way for entrepreneurs with big dreams but little capital to start a business. Working from their homes, they can avoid spending tens of thousands of dollars on commercial kitchen space.

Animal Husbandry Workers Freedom & Opportunity Act

Occupational Licensing

Animal Husbandry Workers Freedom & Opportunity Act

Animal husbandry is a specialty in agriculture and animal science. It focuses on breeding and care of farm animals, including cows, pigs, chickens, sheep and horses. Workers play a crucial role in maintaining the health…

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Erica's News, Articles & Publications

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Erica's Letters & Statements

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