A federal judge presiding over the North End outdoor dining dispute has promised a ruling sooner rather than later after taking eight months to schedule an initial hearing.
Judge Leo T. Sorokin has yet to decide on a complaint from a group of 21 neighborhood restaurateurs and the North End Chamber of Commerce that Mayor Michelle Wu targeted their establishments due to an anti-Italian bias when imposing heavy outdoor dining restrictions.
The judge took the complaint and the city’s request to dismiss the argument under advisement before hearing from both sides in the Seaport late Friday afternoon, citing the “serious issues” raised.
“I want to give them their due,” Sorokin said. “I do apologize that it’s taken me some time to reach this hearing, but it won’t take me nearly as long to issue a decision. I am mindful that it is of great importance to the plaintiffs and of great importance to the city.”
The North End Restaurant Group – led by Jorge Mendoza-Iturralde, co-owner of Vinoteca di Monica, and Carla Gomes, owner of Terramia and Antico Forno – filed the complaint in January, alleging Wu has targeted their establishments unfairly and discriminatorily over the years.
City attorney Samantha Fuchs filed a motion to dismiss the restaurateurs’ complaint in federal court in April, saying the group’s argument is flawed on several fronts, in particular, failing to show how it deserves “any heightened scrutiny.”
In 2022, officials forced restaurateurs to pay a $7,500 fee for outdoor dining operations in a shortened season compared to other neighborhoods. In 2023, the city banned on-street dining, limiting the al fresco option to “compliant sidewalk patios,” a restriction which continued this year.
Restaurateurs amended the complaint in March, adding losses they anticipated they’d encounter in 2024, fees they paid in 2022 and lost revenue from 2023. Out of Boston’s 23 neighborhoods, the North End has been the only one hit with restrictions against their will
Attorney Thomas Frongillo, representing the group, argued Friday that the city is misframing the complaint, saying it didn’t identify the restaurateurs’ numerous claims. He walked through the history of the dispute including how Wu at a 2022 St. Patrick’s Day breakfast compared protesting restaurateurs to snowflakes.
Frongillo also blasted Wu and her administration for a lack of transparency throughout the years-long fight.
“Unlike prior administrations, what they did was that they kept everything under wraps,” he said. “The public had no idea what they were doing.”
Fuchs argued that the restaurateurs fall short in creating a suspect class and making a disparate impact claim that is backed with a discriminatory purpose.
“Discriminatory purpose means that the city enacted these policies because of a particular group, not merely in spite of,” she said. “There’s no evidence, your honor, in the second amended complaint to show the city enacted these policies in order to harm a (class of people).”
Fuchs also spoke about the factors that have shaped the restrictions in the North End: The city’s oldest neighborhood, peppered with historic buildings and narrow brick sidewalks, has the densest concentration of restaurants in the state, with roughly 95 eateries in a third of a square mile.
“We all acknowledge that the North End is different,” Fuchs said.
Restaurateurs have fought against the city’s attempt to compare neighborhoods as a whole, with data they’ve gathered through Freedom of Information requests showing restaurants on particular streets in other neighborhoods are comparable – Newbury Street in Back Bay, West Broadway in South Boston, etc.
“You can take Hanover Street and put it right inside Newbury Street where they have 24 restaurants on Newbury Street and 30 on Hanover Street,” Frongillo said, “and look at the remarkable similarities between the settings.”
“You have to look at what they actually did here,” he added. “They targeted the North End Italian restaurants, they represent 98% of restaurants in the North End.”
