September 26, 2025 • 19 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, for years, Danielle Mickelson poured her energy into building a small but growing food business. Then, a wave of regulations stopped her in her tracks. What followed was an unlikely legal battle that pitted a single entrepreneur against a web of rules and administrative overreach. But with the Institute of Justice, Danielle fought back.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
And we returned to our American stories. And now it's
time for another rule of Law story. As a part
of our Rule of Law series, where we show you
the absence or presence of the rule of law in
our lives. Here's our own Monty Montgomery with a story.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Danielle Michaelson's story begins in Rawa, North Dakota.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
So I'm a North Dakota native. I grew up about
thirty miles from where I currently live. I married my
high school sweetheart. I went to the University of North
Dakota to be a high school English teacher, which I immediately
started doing when I graduated in nineteen ninety four. So
(01:02):
I was an English teacher for twenty two years. But
the entire time that I was doing that and raising
my kids, I was always gardening. It was in my blood.
My grandmother was a gardener, My mom and dad were gardeners.
It just seemed like the thing people did you know.
You had to have a garden, You had to produce
(01:23):
your own food, you had to save it for the winter,
you had to can and process, and then of course
cook homemade meals. So we were always food producers. But
food producers just for our family. In twenty fourteen, I
was still teaching and still gardening, and my sons, who
(01:48):
were then fourteen and twelve, wanted to make a little
money to go visit their grandparents, who live in Las
Vegas in the wintertime. And I told them they could
sell all of our extra vegetables at our farmer's market.
We set up a card table and the bowls from
my kitchen and they sold green beans and potatoes and
(02:11):
some onions, and they made seventy two dollars and they
were beyond excited at how great they were at it.
And over the course of the next few years, we grew,
our tables grew, our tents grew. We started canning everything
from pickles to sulfas, to gems and jellies, and it
(02:31):
became an intense passion. This growth of this business became
a passion, and all of a sudden I realized that
my heart needed to be in that garden and not
in a classroom anymore, and that that was the year
that I decided that was the last time that I
would leave my garden at the end of August, that
(02:55):
the next August I would be there with it, and
I would no longer be in the classroom. I quit teaching.
My world and my passion had changed and I needed
to chase it.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
And Danielle wouldn't name her business Michaelson Tiny Plants, But why.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
So our business is called Michaelson Tiny Plants because when
our kids were really little, they were tiny, tiny humans.
I mean, even as they grew, they were still little people,
and we always referred to them as tiny pants. Come here,
tiny pants. And I feel like I feel like it
every time that when I start my tiny plants growing
(03:35):
in the spring, it's like growing your children. There's this
attachment to this life that's coming out of the ground,
and it's ground that belongs to me and is nurtured
by me. And I watched them. I watched the plants grow,
and I watched them produce food. And I remember one
(03:55):
of the year's first years I was teaching, I'd been
reading an article about food security and how people often
don't have food security in their life, and I was
standing in the middle of my garden and I realized
that I was. It was my food security, and I
could help make it food security for my community.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Which is important to Ralla. She's providing a service and
nobody else does in her city and giving people options
such as healthy food.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
North Dakota is a very long distance from where the
majority of fruits and vegetables are grown that end up
in our grocery store. The average time from when a
vegetable is picked till it gets to Ralla, North Dakota
is between ten and fourteen days. And if you take
a look at the science of food, the minute you
pick a fresh vegetable, it starts to lose nutrients. And
(04:50):
I started thinking about, you know, that loss of nutrients
by the time it gets to the grocery store, and
how I could provide to our community food that had
been picked literally the day before. You know, we also
have a practice that we believe in no waste, and
we just decided to start using our what we were
(05:11):
growing in products that had a little bit longer shelf life.
So some of the overridge goes into jars, and we
just started putting a few out on the on the
table with our vegetables and realized that we had a following.
People were coming back and asking for more. We made
(05:31):
one nine and fifty jars last year of dill pickles,
and from there we started looking at what you couldn't
get in Ralla, North Dakota. Like, what can't you get
in Ralla, North Dakota. One thing was sour dough Bread's
no way to get fresh sour dough bread. We don't
even have a bakery in Ralla. We do tomato juice.
We do a spicy tomato juice. And so we use
(05:53):
our peppers and our onions and our holopanios and our
tomatoes and we make a cold pressed juice that we can.
And then one day the Food Freedom Bill was passed
that allowed us to start processing food into other things.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Otherwise known as House Bill fourteen thirty three, the Cottage
Food Act was passed by elected officials in the North
Dakota House and Senate and open the door for Danielle's
business to expand even more. You see, before the bill passed,
things like pizza and French onion soup could only be
sold out of somewhere with a commercial kitchen. But now
(06:32):
Danielle and others could sell out of their home kitchens
directly to their customers.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
And people have been doing this forever. Right, You bake
muffins and take them over to your neighbor and give
them to them and they enjoy them. Then your neighbor says,
can you make me four dozen? I want them for
my family, And you couldn't at that point sell them
to them. You could give them to them, but you
couldn't sell them, which seems kind of strange to me.
(07:00):
So the cottage food law actually freed that up, as
long as the transaction is person to person, as long
as the producer of the food is handing the food
to the consumer, and the consumer can ask the questions
and take a look at the product and decide if
they trust you. And inherently that's what these small businesses
(07:22):
are about, right, friendships and trust, then you can sell
to them. And it really made a huge difference for
people who wanted to try starting a small business. You know,
biting the bullet in putting in one hundred thousand dollars
a commercial kitchen because you think you might be good
at something is a little scary. But you could actually
(07:44):
do a test market use you know, you could. You
can have your own test market. Now you can try
selling things. How did I know that so many people
were going to love my deal pickles like my family
loves them. But does that mean that everyone who tries
them actually will come back to buy more. We didn't know,
and so as our business grew, that you know, was
a big deal. But the cottage food law allowed was
(08:06):
for people to start to expand, and for us, that's
exactly what it meant. Our business grew. I think it was,
you know, it was this. So I quit teaching in
June twenty seventeen, and the cottage food Law passed in
August twenty seventeen. So it was just this immense excitement
(08:29):
that when I had trance, you know, when I quit
teaching to become a small food producer, this was like
another door opened in front of me again, and I
could just envision where my business could go. It was
just a it was a reinforcing my decision to be
a small food producer and a businesswoman. And it was
(08:54):
it was, you know, like the stars aligned, right. I
quit teaching. I put all my energy into this and
and then this magical door opened and I could use
all my creativity and all my planning and thoughts to
grow my business literally straightforward.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
At least that's what Danielle thought would happen with the
new lawn place. She didn't expect the face of lawlessness
from her own government.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
And you're listening to Danielle Michaelson tell the story of
her own freedom to pursue her passion. And it turned
out that passion was in the garden. When we come back,
more of this story from Raua, North Dakota, daniel Michaelson's story,
a freedom story and a rule of law story. Here
(09:42):
on our American stories, and we continue with our American
(10:11):
stories and the story of Danielle Michaelson. When we last
left off, Danielle was growing her business and was lent
a massive helping hand by the passage of the cottage
food laws. But the smooth sailing wouldn't last much longer.
Let's continue with her story.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Everything seemed to be going well for daniel Michaelson, but
the North Dakota Department of Health had other ideas and
tried to get rid of the cottage food laws, which
allowed Danielle to sell food she otherwise couldn't.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
I mean, it was a whirlwind of craziness right. We
weren't even sure how this could possibly be happening, but
the Health department decided that they were worried about the
safety of these foods. Even though there was no food
borne illness in Farmers Market produced cottage foods, produced foods
since the passing of the law, and they tried to
(11:07):
have the law changed and they failed.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
They failed because the North Dakota Legislature refused to make
the changes to the law that the Health Department wanted.
But after this, the Health Department did it anyways, which
is a violation of the rule of law because administrative
bodies can't pass laws on their own. They can only
carry out laws that the legislature passed.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
I suddenly had to stop selling my soup. I suddenly
had to put all of my ideas on hold, and
I was just shocked. I was shocked that this is
where we had gone, because, like I said, I was
elated with what could come, and then it was just
stopped dead over this fear for food safety and not
(11:56):
faulting them for that. But the one thing I stressed
over and over again is when you buy a jar
of salsa from me, or you buy a court of
soup from me, I actually take what I feed my
family from the exact same supply, and I am going
to be above and beyond careful about what I am
(12:20):
providing to people for sale because that's the exact same
food that I'm feeding my family. And that's how cottage
food producers feel. Also in a business model, the reality
is is you make one person sick and your business
is done. So small business can't ride out and e
(12:40):
Coli outbreak on romaine like we've seen across the nation.
Small business has to be on top of their game
and specific in particular and perfect at all times. That's
why we were surprised when these rules came out, because
we felt like we were the best of the best,
right and suddenly we're the ones that are suffering under
(13:02):
the administrative rules. It almost makes you feel like you're
not intelligent enough to know better. That's offensive, right, I'm
good at this. And my customers were just heartbroken and
that they couldn't get the soup that they had learned
to depend on. And they're so funny because all of
(13:24):
the people that live in my community are they all
have the ability to cook and cook well, but French
onion soup takes a very long time to caramelize all
those onions. And they always like to say, you know,
I could make this myself, but I'd much rather you
did it because yours is so good, and I don't
have to, you know, do all the work. And they
(13:44):
come to market and they want to buy soup, and
I have to say, I'm sorry, but the health Department
made rules and I can't sell you soup anymore. And
then the crazy part is is if you're if you are,
you know, an English teacher from a town of fourteen hundred,
you don't even know what you can do to fight it.
I had no clue. I didn't have the resources to
(14:05):
hire an attorney to fight. I wasn't even sure what
the fight would be. And for the most part, you know,
we're just rule following, law abiding, happy people, and we
don't get put in places where we're suddenly fighting against
administrative rules. I'd never even heard that term before. Oh,
(14:26):
probably when I was in high school. I'd heard that
term before, but I'd never thought about it since high school.
And so I didn't even know what to do. And
that's why I said that, you know, my business stegment
and and my hopes and dreams sort of died for
a second. I just buckled down and went back to work.
You know, I guess we'll just sell fresh foods and vegetables.
And the things that we can bake and can and
(14:49):
we'll give up soup, and that's just how it will go.
You just sort of resign yourself. And I think that's
a terrible thing to say about what happened to me.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Thankfully she would be approached by the Institute for Justice,
a public interest law firm that stands up for Americans
when their rights are violated at no cost. The people
like Danielle.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
So thankful for the Institute for Justice because I didn't
even know we could fight it. And suddenly they showed up,
you know, like your knight in Shining Armor, and they're like,
we can help you. And I'm like, you've got to
be kidding me, and they're like, no, we can help you.
You just have to be willing to stand up and be,
you know, the plaintiff in the case. And here we go.
You know, they explained to me that it was unconstitutional,
(15:36):
and I hadn't even thought of it on that level.
What they did unilaterally with the administrative rules was circumvent
what the entire House and Senate had, you know, they
had spoken were not changing the law. They circumvented that
entire process when they had already voted it down.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
There was also a second violation of the rule of law.
The North Dakota Constitution states that people have to be
treated equally under the law, but the rules created by
the Health Department didn't do that. You see, the regulations
allow a farmer to sell uninspected rab poultry, well banning
a home cook like Danielle from selling chicken noodle soup.
(16:21):
That makes no sense. It's completely arbitrary. And thankfully the
court sought that way too and ruled in Danielle's favor.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
They they won, and we just got this email that
said you won your case, and that was it. It
was over, And all of a sudden, my brain just
spun thinking about all of the ways that this had
opened this door for me again, and it was time
to not worry about being stopped and just barrel forward.
(16:49):
And we have new goals now, and the goals are
super funny or super interesting or super ironic, however you
want to see it. But our next goal is to
build a large scale indoor market that will actually have
a commercial kitchen, and commercial kitchens will allow us to ship.
(17:09):
And so even though my fight was for cottage food,
which means I can cook it in my kitchen. My
long term goal gets me a commercial kitchen, and then
I'm you know, on the other side. You know, then
have crossed over. But the reality is without the cottage
food ability, I would have never been able to build
(17:33):
my teeny tiny business that started in twenty fourteen to
a place where I'm ready to build a facility and
have a commercial kitchen. So maybe in one more year
we will be looking at building a new facility right
on our main street. Now watch me, Now, this business
is going to grow like crazy.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
And great job as always to Monty Montgomery, and a
special thanks to the folks at the Institute for Justice
who represented Danielle Michaelson and represented her freedom to sell
food on an equal playing field. And also for the
people of North Dakota. It allowed them to get this
kind of food and not have it blocked by people
(18:16):
who weren't represented in their state legislature. These rules were
passed and promulgated by people at the Department of Health,
and the Department of Health doesn't have the right in
North Dakota to do such things. What was fascinating was
listening to Danielle's sheer frustration. She said, I didn't know
what to do. I didn't even know what the fight
was or who it was with and what she could
(18:39):
do about it. And in came the Institute for Justice,
and well did what they do, which is represent mostly
small businesses in rule of law and property right cases.
The story of Danielle Michaelson, the story of Michaelson, Tiny Plants,
and about so much more, but particularly the rule of law.
(18:59):
Here on our American stories
And we returned to our American stories. And now it's
time for another rule of Law story. As a part
of our Rule of Law series, where we show you
the absence or presence of the rule of law in
our lives. Here's our own Monty Montgomery with a story.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Danielle Michaelson's story begins in Rawa, North Dakota.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
So I'm a North Dakota native. I grew up about
thirty miles from where I currently live. I married my
high school sweetheart. I went to the University of North
Dakota to be a high school English teacher, which I immediately
started doing when I graduated in nineteen ninety four. So
(01:02):
I was an English teacher for twenty two years. But
the entire time that I was doing that and raising
my kids, I was always gardening. It was in my blood.
My grandmother was a gardener, My mom and dad were gardeners.
It just seemed like the thing people did you know.
You had to have a garden, You had to produce
(01:23):
your own food, you had to save it for the winter,
you had to can and process, and then of course
cook homemade meals. So we were always food producers. But
food producers just for our family. In twenty fourteen, I
was still teaching and still gardening, and my sons, who
(01:48):
were then fourteen and twelve, wanted to make a little
money to go visit their grandparents, who live in Las
Vegas in the wintertime. And I told them they could
sell all of our extra vegetables at our farmer's market.
We set up a card table and the bowls from
my kitchen and they sold green beans and potatoes and
(02:11):
some onions, and they made seventy two dollars and they
were beyond excited at how great they were at it.
And over the course of the next few years, we grew,
our tables grew, our tents grew. We started canning everything
from pickles to sulfas, to gems and jellies, and it
(02:31):
became an intense passion. This growth of this business became
a passion, and all of a sudden I realized that
my heart needed to be in that garden and not
in a classroom anymore, and that that was the year
that I decided that was the last time that I
would leave my garden at the end of August, that
(02:55):
the next August I would be there with it, and
I would no longer be in the classroom. I quit teaching.
My world and my passion had changed and I needed
to chase it.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
And Danielle wouldn't name her business Michaelson Tiny Plants, But why.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
So our business is called Michaelson Tiny Plants because when
our kids were really little, they were tiny, tiny humans.
I mean, even as they grew, they were still little people,
and we always referred to them as tiny pants. Come here,
tiny pants. And I feel like I feel like it
every time that when I start my tiny plants growing
(03:35):
in the spring, it's like growing your children. There's this
attachment to this life that's coming out of the ground,
and it's ground that belongs to me and is nurtured
by me. And I watched them. I watched the plants grow,
and I watched them produce food. And I remember one
(03:55):
of the year's first years I was teaching, I'd been
reading an article about food security and how people often
don't have food security in their life, and I was
standing in the middle of my garden and I realized
that I was. It was my food security, and I
could help make it food security for my community.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Which is important to Ralla. She's providing a service and
nobody else does in her city and giving people options
such as healthy food.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
North Dakota is a very long distance from where the
majority of fruits and vegetables are grown that end up
in our grocery store. The average time from when a
vegetable is picked till it gets to Ralla, North Dakota
is between ten and fourteen days. And if you take
a look at the science of food, the minute you
pick a fresh vegetable, it starts to lose nutrients. And
(04:50):
I started thinking about, you know, that loss of nutrients
by the time it gets to the grocery store, and
how I could provide to our community food that had
been picked literally the day before. You know, we also
have a practice that we believe in no waste, and
we just decided to start using our what we were
(05:11):
growing in products that had a little bit longer shelf life.
So some of the overridge goes into jars, and we
just started putting a few out on the on the
table with our vegetables and realized that we had a following.
People were coming back and asking for more. We made
(05:31):
one nine and fifty jars last year of dill pickles,
and from there we started looking at what you couldn't
get in Ralla, North Dakota. Like, what can't you get
in Ralla, North Dakota. One thing was sour dough Bread's
no way to get fresh sour dough bread. We don't
even have a bakery in Ralla. We do tomato juice.
We do a spicy tomato juice. And so we use
(05:53):
our peppers and our onions and our holopanios and our
tomatoes and we make a cold pressed juice that we can.
And then one day the Food Freedom Bill was passed
that allowed us to start processing food into other things.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Otherwise known as House Bill fourteen thirty three, the Cottage
Food Act was passed by elected officials in the North
Dakota House and Senate and open the door for Danielle's
business to expand even more. You see, before the bill passed,
things like pizza and French onion soup could only be
sold out of somewhere with a commercial kitchen. But now
(06:32):
Danielle and others could sell out of their home kitchens
directly to their customers.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
And people have been doing this forever. Right, You bake
muffins and take them over to your neighbor and give
them to them and they enjoy them. Then your neighbor says,
can you make me four dozen? I want them for
my family, And you couldn't at that point sell them
to them. You could give them to them, but you
couldn't sell them, which seems kind of strange to me.
(07:00):
So the cottage food law actually freed that up, as
long as the transaction is person to person, as long
as the producer of the food is handing the food
to the consumer, and the consumer can ask the questions
and take a look at the product and decide if
they trust you. And inherently that's what these small businesses
(07:22):
are about, right, friendships and trust, then you can sell
to them. And it really made a huge difference for
people who wanted to try starting a small business. You know,
biting the bullet in putting in one hundred thousand dollars
a commercial kitchen because you think you might be good
at something is a little scary. But you could actually
(07:44):
do a test market use you know, you could. You
can have your own test market. Now you can try
selling things. How did I know that so many people
were going to love my deal pickles like my family
loves them. But does that mean that everyone who tries
them actually will come back to buy more. We didn't know,
and so as our business grew, that you know, was
a big deal. But the cottage food law allowed was
(08:06):
for people to start to expand, and for us, that's
exactly what it meant. Our business grew. I think it was,
you know, it was this. So I quit teaching in
June twenty seventeen, and the cottage food Law passed in
August twenty seventeen. So it was just this immense excitement
(08:29):
that when I had trance, you know, when I quit
teaching to become a small food producer, this was like
another door opened in front of me again, and I
could just envision where my business could go. It was
just a it was a reinforcing my decision to be
a small food producer and a businesswoman. And it was
(08:54):
it was, you know, like the stars aligned, right. I
quit teaching. I put all my energy into this and
and then this magical door opened and I could use
all my creativity and all my planning and thoughts to
grow my business literally straightforward.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
At least that's what Danielle thought would happen with the
new lawn place. She didn't expect the face of lawlessness
from her own government.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
And you're listening to Danielle Michaelson tell the story of
her own freedom to pursue her passion. And it turned
out that passion was in the garden. When we come back,
more of this story from Raua, North Dakota, daniel Michaelson's story,
a freedom story and a rule of law story. Here
(09:42):
on our American stories, and we continue with our American
(10:11):
stories and the story of Danielle Michaelson. When we last
left off, Danielle was growing her business and was lent
a massive helping hand by the passage of the cottage
food laws. But the smooth sailing wouldn't last much longer.
Let's continue with her story.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Everything seemed to be going well for daniel Michaelson, but
the North Dakota Department of Health had other ideas and
tried to get rid of the cottage food laws, which
allowed Danielle to sell food she otherwise couldn't.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
I mean, it was a whirlwind of craziness right. We
weren't even sure how this could possibly be happening, but
the Health department decided that they were worried about the
safety of these foods. Even though there was no food
borne illness in Farmers Market produced cottage foods, produced foods
since the passing of the law, and they tried to
(11:07):
have the law changed and they failed.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
They failed because the North Dakota Legislature refused to make
the changes to the law that the Health Department wanted.
But after this, the Health Department did it anyways, which
is a violation of the rule of law because administrative
bodies can't pass laws on their own. They can only
carry out laws that the legislature passed.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
I suddenly had to stop selling my soup. I suddenly
had to put all of my ideas on hold, and
I was just shocked. I was shocked that this is
where we had gone, because, like I said, I was
elated with what could come, and then it was just
stopped dead over this fear for food safety and not
(11:56):
faulting them for that. But the one thing I stressed
over and over again is when you buy a jar
of salsa from me, or you buy a court of
soup from me, I actually take what I feed my
family from the exact same supply, and I am going
to be above and beyond careful about what I am
(12:20):
providing to people for sale because that's the exact same
food that I'm feeding my family. And that's how cottage
food producers feel. Also in a business model, the reality
is is you make one person sick and your business
is done. So small business can't ride out and e
(12:40):
Coli outbreak on romaine like we've seen across the nation.
Small business has to be on top of their game
and specific in particular and perfect at all times. That's
why we were surprised when these rules came out, because
we felt like we were the best of the best,
right and suddenly we're the ones that are suffering under
(13:02):
the administrative rules. It almost makes you feel like you're
not intelligent enough to know better. That's offensive, right, I'm
good at this. And my customers were just heartbroken and
that they couldn't get the soup that they had learned
to depend on. And they're so funny because all of
(13:24):
the people that live in my community are they all
have the ability to cook and cook well, but French
onion soup takes a very long time to caramelize all
those onions. And they always like to say, you know,
I could make this myself, but I'd much rather you
did it because yours is so good, and I don't
have to, you know, do all the work. And they
(13:44):
come to market and they want to buy soup, and
I have to say, I'm sorry, but the health Department
made rules and I can't sell you soup anymore. And
then the crazy part is is if you're if you are,
you know, an English teacher from a town of fourteen hundred,
you don't even know what you can do to fight it.
I had no clue. I didn't have the resources to
(14:05):
hire an attorney to fight. I wasn't even sure what
the fight would be. And for the most part, you know,
we're just rule following, law abiding, happy people, and we
don't get put in places where we're suddenly fighting against
administrative rules. I'd never even heard that term before. Oh,
(14:26):
probably when I was in high school. I'd heard that
term before, but I'd never thought about it since high school.
And so I didn't even know what to do. And
that's why I said that, you know, my business stegment
and and my hopes and dreams sort of died for
a second. I just buckled down and went back to work.
You know, I guess we'll just sell fresh foods and vegetables.
And the things that we can bake and can and
(14:49):
we'll give up soup, and that's just how it will go.
You just sort of resign yourself. And I think that's
a terrible thing to say about what happened to me.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Thankfully she would be approached by the Institute for Justice,
a public interest law firm that stands up for Americans
when their rights are violated at no cost. The people
like Danielle.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
So thankful for the Institute for Justice because I didn't
even know we could fight it. And suddenly they showed up,
you know, like your knight in Shining Armor, and they're like,
we can help you. And I'm like, you've got to
be kidding me, and they're like, no, we can help you.
You just have to be willing to stand up and be,
you know, the plaintiff in the case. And here we go.
You know, they explained to me that it was unconstitutional,
(15:36):
and I hadn't even thought of it on that level.
What they did unilaterally with the administrative rules was circumvent
what the entire House and Senate had, you know, they
had spoken were not changing the law. They circumvented that
entire process when they had already voted it down.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
There was also a second violation of the rule of law.
The North Dakota Constitution states that people have to be
treated equally under the law, but the rules created by
the Health Department didn't do that. You see, the regulations
allow a farmer to sell uninspected rab poultry, well banning
a home cook like Danielle from selling chicken noodle soup.
(16:21):
That makes no sense. It's completely arbitrary. And thankfully the
court sought that way too and ruled in Danielle's favor.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
They they won, and we just got this email that
said you won your case, and that was it. It
was over, And all of a sudden, my brain just
spun thinking about all of the ways that this had
opened this door for me again, and it was time
to not worry about being stopped and just barrel forward.
(16:49):
And we have new goals now, and the goals are
super funny or super interesting or super ironic, however you
want to see it. But our next goal is to
build a large scale indoor market that will actually have
a commercial kitchen, and commercial kitchens will allow us to ship.
(17:09):
And so even though my fight was for cottage food,
which means I can cook it in my kitchen. My
long term goal gets me a commercial kitchen, and then
I'm you know, on the other side. You know, then
have crossed over. But the reality is without the cottage
food ability, I would have never been able to build
(17:33):
my teeny tiny business that started in twenty fourteen to
a place where I'm ready to build a facility and
have a commercial kitchen. So maybe in one more year
we will be looking at building a new facility right
on our main street. Now watch me, Now, this business
is going to grow like crazy.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
And great job as always to Monty Montgomery, and a
special thanks to the folks at the Institute for Justice
who represented Danielle Michaelson and represented her freedom to sell
food on an equal playing field. And also for the
people of North Dakota. It allowed them to get this
kind of food and not have it blocked by people
(18:16):
who weren't represented in their state legislature. These rules were
passed and promulgated by people at the Department of Health,
and the Department of Health doesn't have the right in
North Dakota to do such things. What was fascinating was
listening to Danielle's sheer frustration. She said, I didn't know
what to do. I didn't even know what the fight
was or who it was with and what she could
(18:39):
do about it. And in came the Institute for Justice,
and well did what they do, which is represent mostly
small businesses in rule of law and property right cases.
The story of Danielle Michaelson, the story of Michaelson, Tiny Plants,
and about so much more, but particularly the rule of law.
(18:59):
Here on our American stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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