IJ Fights Protectionist Zoning Abuse In South Fulton, Georgia

Awa Diagne lived the American Dream for nearly 30 years. She moved here from Senegal in 1992, raised six children, and became a U.S. citizen in 2002. Like many entrepreneurial immigrants, she supported her family by braiding hair in downtown Atlanta. 

Then in 2021, tragedy struck when her husband passed away from COVID-19. Awa and her family had just moved to the Atlanta suburb of South Fulton so that her twin daughters could attend the excellent local schools. But without Awa’s husband, the logistics of her long commute downtown and getting her daughters to and from school became impossible. She had to move her braiding shop to South Fulton.

Thankfully, Awa found the perfect storefront near her home and the school. She worked with the city, signed a lease, and spent several thousand dollars on renovations. She applied for the necessary special use permit, and both the city’s zoning staff and the planning commission recommended that she be approved.

The South Fulton City Council, however, had other plans. Despite overwhelming community support for Awa, the owner of a hair salon in the same shopping center complained that she didn’t want to have to compete with Awa. So, at the hearing, the council spent its time focusing on the dangers of competition and denied Awa’s permit. 

At one point, a councilwoman said that “it is not fair for small businesses to have to compete with someone right next door to them” and that the council should deny Awa because “we don’t want any business to suffer any losses due to an oversaturation.” One councilwoman even suggested that Awa should work with the city’s “planner” to find another location out of town where she wasn’t “competing against anyone” and nobody was competing against her. After these speeches, the council rejected Awa’s application.

Without a special use permit, Awa cannot open her braiding shop. Her situation received some news coverage, and several friends of IJ reached out to us. That’s because anyone familiar with IJ’s work knows that we’ve defended the rights of natural hair braiders to earn an honest living since our founding. And as we announced in the August issue of this magazine, IJ launched our Zoning Justice Project to protect property owners from outrageous zoning abuse like South Fulton’s. 

Even more fortunately for Awa, the Georgia Supreme Court held just last year in an IJ case that protecting one business from competition by another is not a legitimate reason for the government to interfere with the right to earn a living. The court struck down the state’s onerous license for lactation consultants, and in doing so made clear that the right to earn a living is treated seriously under the Georgia Constitution. IJ and Awa are poised to extend that victory.

Awa refuses to give up on her American Dream. After all, South Fulton did exactly what the state Supreme Court said that government cannot do. It’s time to remind them.

Renée Flaherty is an IJ senior attorney.

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