Four North End restaurant owners dropped their lawsuit against Mayor Michelle Wu, retracting claims that she showed anti-Italian discrimination when singling out their neighborhood for last year’s $7,500 outdoor dining fee.
The owners, who collectively represent five restaurants, requested that the May 2022 lawsuit be dismissed “without prejudice,” according to their attorney, Richard Chambers, who filed the motion to dismiss in U.S. District Court Wednesday.
“We have a hearing coming up and at this point, my client instructed me to dismiss the complaint,” Chambers said Friday, referring to Jorge Mendoza-Iturralde of Vinoteca di Monica. “I got him to the second level and for whatever reasons he doesn’t want to go forward.”
Chambers added that his client did not provide specifics on why he chose not to pursue the case, but said it was likely because “he was the only one fighting.”
“Nobody else is rallying around him,” Chambers said. “It’s just him. You know that old saying, taking on City Hall.”
Mendoza-Iturralde declined comment when reached by phone.
The decision to drop the case is something of an about-face for the restaurateurs, who opted to amend their initial complaint with the discrimination claim this past March, and chose to oppose the mayor’s motion to dismiss the case.
A city attorney had filed Wu’s motion to dismiss in January, which stated that the plaintiffs, as individuals, “do not have constitutional standing,” and failed to state any claim upon which relief can be granted.”
The restaurant owners had filed an opposition to the city’s motion, pointing to the “personal loss” each plaintiff had incurred as individuals “due to the fees Mayor Wu forced them to pay for outdoor dining.” A hearing on the matter was due to take place in two weeks, court documents show.
Wu and other city officials said the decision to impose a fee on North End owners was aimed at reducing quality of life burdens to residents, such as the increased noise, trash, traffic and loss of parking that came with outdoor dining there.
A further decision to ban on-street outdoor dining in the North End this year led to the group’s amended lawsuit in March. But the mayor’s choice was well-received by residents, with one person saying at a neighborhood meeting in February that it showed the city was “listening to us for once.”
A Wu spokesperson said in a statement Friday that the mayor’s administration “prides itself on implementing policies that make Boston’s neighborhoods great places to live and work, which is what drove our outdoor dining program across the city.”
“The charges in this lawsuit were completely without legal merit, and the plaintiffs are right to abandon their legal path to nowhere,” the spokesperson said. “We will continue dialogue with residents and restaurants across the city to improve outdoor dining, including in the North End.”
Chambers said Mendoza-Iturralde initially hired him because he was upset that restaurant owners had to pay a $7,500 fee to provide outdoor dining in the North End “and no one else in Boston did.”
Mendoza-Iturralde tried to rally big restaurants in the North End to oppose the city’s decision to charge an outdoor dining fee, along with $480 for parking, but those businesses “didn’t want to get on board for whatever reasons,” Chambers said.
His client was able to join with three other owners, his brother, Patrick Mendoza of Monica’s Trattorias; Carla Gomes of Terramia Ristorante and Antico Forno; and Jason Silvestri of Rabia’s Dulce Fumo, to collectively file suit.
These three owners did not respond to requests for comment.
The lawsuit had argued that singling out the neighborhood for fees was based on Wu’s bias against “white, Italian men” and created “unfair” competition with the city’s other neighborhoods.
The group felt the mayor attacked them during her remarks at last year’s annual St. Patrick’s Day breakfast, which features politicians roasting one another with jokes.
Amid tension surrounding her decision to impose the outdoor dining fee, Wu had said, “I’m getting used to dealing with problems that are expensive, disruptive and white,” the Herald has reported.
The lawsuit pointed to what it described as common knowledge that the traditional owner of a restaurant in the North End “is a white male of Italian descent,” and to this area being “generally regarded as the last true ethnic Boston Italian neighborhood.”
In February, Wu opted to ban on-street outdoor dining in the North End this year, citing the increased traffic congestion expected to be brought on by the two-month Sumner Tunnel closure this summer and construction on the Washington Street Bridge.
North End restaurants with adequate sidewalk and private patio space can apply for an outdoor dining permit from the city, according to a prior statement from Wu’s office.
