This article was written by Jack Rooney and featured in the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin on June 18, 2014.

For a law practice that does all of its work on a pro bono basis, you might think the Liberty Justice Center has no problem finding clients.

But for an operation that has a specific goal in mind — advancing “economic liberty” and related causes — and has just one lawyer on staff, finding who to represent is the toughest part of the job.

“It’s challenging to find clients,” said Jacob H. Huebert, senior attorney at the LJC. “You can see that laws are unjust and know that there are people who are harmed by it, but you don’t necessarily have a way to know who the right person is at the right time.”

Founded in 2011, the Chicago-based LJC focuses on cases involving the First Amendment and state laws or local ordinances they believe have infringed on a person’s right to start a business and make a living.

Huebert, 35, grew up in North Lima, Ohio, before receiving a bachelor’s degree in economics from Grove City College in 2001 and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School in 2004.

After spending five years as a litigator at Porter, Wright, Morris & Arthur LLP in Columbus, Ohio, he established his own appellate firm, Huebert Law Offices, which he moved to Chicago in 2011.

He planned to continue his appellate practice in Chicago, but after learning about the LJC, he decided to check it out.

“(When) I heard the Liberty Justice Center was forming, I knew that I had to be part of that if I could,” he said. “I’ve been interested in the kind of work that Liberty Justice Center does for years. … I had written about this kind of work in articles and so on, and so once I saw an opportunity to do that, I wanted to take advantage of that.”

Since 2011, Huebert and the LJC have represented clients in five cases. Two resulted in favorable decisions for Huebert’s clients while three are still pending.

The LJC found its first client in downstate Bloomington in early 2012 after Julie Crowe was denied a license to start a vehicle-for-hire business, which would primarily serve students at Illinois State University.

A Bloomington city ordinance required a hearing to determine whether Crowe’s business would be “desirable and serve the public interest.” At that meeting, taxi and limo companies were allowed to argue against the necessity of Crowe’s business, and her application was denied.

Huebert, who found Crowe’s case by combing through news reports from around the state, argued the Bloomington ordinance had no bearing on the public’s welfare or safety and was therefore unconstitutional.

“Whether something’s desirable is subjective, of course, and doesn’t necessarily have any connection to the public’s health or safety, and all laws under the due process clause of the Illinois Constitution have to have some rational relationship to serving the public’s health, safety or welfare,” Huebert said.

McLean County Circuit Judge Rebecca S. Foley ruled in Crowe’s favor in August, striking down the Bloomington ordinance.

The city did not appeal the decision, and since then, Crowe has successfully owned and operated Main Street Shuttle LLC.

Without the LJC’s help, Crowe said, she likely would have given up.

“I don’t know how I would have gone forward on my own,” she said. “I don’t think I would have been able to afford legal representation, so I probably would have just gotten shut out of the marketplace.”

In a similar case currently in Cook County Circuit Court, Huebert and the LJC are representing Beaver’s Coffee & Donuts, a Chicago food-truck business trying to expand into Evanston, where an ordinance prevents food trucks from operating within the city unless the company also owns a restaurant in the city.

“It’s unjust,” said Gabriel Wiesen, the truck’s owner. “I don’t think that the government’s place is to stand between the consumer and a potentially thriving small business.”

Wiesen is hopeful that he’ll prevail in the case, which is pending in Cook County Circuit Court. A spokesman for the city of Evanston declined to comment.

Huebert said such cases represent the core of the LJC’s economic-liberty litigation by targeting laws that place an unjust burden on potential business owners.

“That really is the essence of the kind of laws we’re looking to attack in our economic-liberty work —  ones that keep people out of a business or occupation,” he said.

In addition to representing individuals in business disputes, the LJC has also waded into a larger state issue involving the First Amendment. They’ve filed a lawsuit challenging Illinois’ campaign finance laws on behalf of a political action committee, Liberty PAC, individual donor Edgar Bachrach and Sen. Kyle McCarter, R-Lebanon.

The LJC shares its offices at 190 S. LaSalle St. with the Illinois Policy Institute — a conservative think tank and policy research group that maintains a lobbying arm — from which the LJC receives a majority of its funding.

Kent Redfield, a professor of political science at the University of Illinois Springfield, said the LJC is part of a fairly recent trend — both statewide and nationally — of policy and legal groups funded by conservative and libertarian interests.

“Given what seem to be pretty strong funding sources, I would suspect that this is something that is sustainable and going to continue,” he said.

Redfield characterized the LJC as “activist, in terms of its engagement,” and an entity in the early stages of its potential influence.

“It’s basically a startup. It’s an extension of the Illinois Policy Institute, and it’s really premature to judge what it might become,” Redfield said. “It doesn’t have a huge presence at this point, but that’s a function of how long they’ve been in existence and the resources they have.”

Redfield said the LJC differs from other groups, given its narrow focus on economic-liberty cases. Other groups — such as the Southern Poverty Law Center or the Brennan Center for Justice — concentrate on social or cultural issues, he said.

Huebert and the LJC’s only other full-time employee, 24-year-old legal research and litigation assistant Bryant Jackson-Green, also write about constitutional law and economic liberty for the LJC’s blog at libertyjusticecenter.org. Huebert has written op-eds for newspapers across the country and wrote a book, “Libertarianism Today,” which was published in 2010.

Huebert, who lives in Chicago with his wife, Allison Huebert, an associate at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, said his work with the LJC makes “a real impact” on clients and their communities.

“It’s great to have a chance to advance these ideas … in a way that actually makes a difference in people’s lives, where you can actually see where we have succeeded in a lawsuit,” he said.

“A person was able to have a business where they otherwise simply would not have been able to have it. They would have had to have some lesser job instead of pursuing their dream in that business. So, of course, it’s tremendously satisfying to see that.”

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