IJ Saves Donut Mural, Shows Town’s Argument Was Full Of Holes

Here’s some tasty news from New Hampshire: Leavitt’s Country Bakery just won its fight to keep its donut mural. And the town of Conway just got a First Amendment beatdown it won’t soon forget.

At IJ, we regularly square off against crusty officials who think they can police speech or art based on what it depicts. But what happened in 2022 really took the cake. Sean Young, the bakery’s owner, let local high school students paint a mural for their senior project. The students whipped up a colorful mountain landscape made of donuts and muffins, with sunbeams rising behind them.

Customers ate it up. But the town’s zoning officer? Not a fan.

He served up a citation, declaring the mural an illegal “sign.” Why? Because, as the town explained, “what makes it a sign is the pastries.” If the students had painted covered bridges and sunflowers, no problem. The officer even said they could’ve painted “The Town of Conway Hates High School Art Students.” But painting baked goods—the very thing Leavitt’s sells—meant the mural had to go.

Once IJ got involved, we learned this half-baked scheme had been going on for decades. The sign code was written so broadly that it covered everything, so officials had cooked up their own rule: If a mural “represented what was being sold inside,” they’d call it a sign. But as the town admitted, a mural’s safety or appearance doesn’t depend on whether it shows pastries or petunias.

We asked Conway to back off and leave the mural alone. The town refused. So we went to trial in February 2025. Three months later, the court served a scalding decision in our favor. Conway’s enforcement, it held, “would not pass any level of scrutiny.” In plain terms: Conway’s censorship wasn’t just unconstitutional—it was legally incoherent. The town’s arguments crumbled under the record we built. 

This victory means the kids’ mural stays up. Permanently. And it’s another victory in IJ’s broader effort to ensure that officials can’t cherry-pick who gets to speak and what messages are allowed.

Rob Frommer is an IJ senior attorney.