SOUTH FULTON, Ga. — A Fulton County judge ordered the City of South Fulton to allow a braid shop to open on Campbellton Fairburn Road amid a legal battle between the owner and the city.
As Channel 2 Action News has reported, Awa Diagne had been working to open her shop due to the city’s like-use zoning code, which officials said limited new businesses with similar use from opening within a mile radius of each other.
Channel 2 Investigative Reporter Ashli Lincoln previously spoke to Diagne, who said her shop was unique in the area because it was the only African braid shop within 15 minutes of the shop’s location.
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However, South Fulton council members disagreed due to the area having a barber shop, beauty supply store and a hair salon nearby, saying that to remain competitive it could not approve the permit.
Fighting the decision, Diagne sued the City of South Fulton, and now a judge has ordered the city to allow her business to operate.
In a statement shared with Channel 2 Action News, a representative for Diagne said the judge ruled that South Fulton had improperly denied Diagne’s permit to open and ordered one be issued.
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“I am so grateful that I’m going to be allowed to open my braiding shop,” Diagne said. “It wasn’t easy to keep believing in my American dream, but I’m happy that I kept going, stood up for what is right, and won.”
The decision was made by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert C.I. McBurney who found that the South Fulton City Council had, according to Diagne’s representative, “abused its discretion when it denied” the permit.
Additionally, McBurney’s ruling said the council had only denied the permit for political reasons, saying instead that it was up to market forces, not government officials, to determine which businesses succeed.
“The most forceful opposition at the Planning Commission came from the owner, employees, and clients of Salon Vibez -- a beauty salon located in the same shopping center where Diagne hoped to start her own equally important small business,” McBurney wrote in his order.
Going further, he wrote that central to the case was the theme of “unconstitutional economic protectionism; that the City may not refuse to issue a business permit to protect the commercial interests of an existing and potentially rival business; that here, in America and in Georgia, the competitive marketplace determines which businesses thrive and which do not -- without the government paternalistically interfering in that process by shielding an existing business from the potentially competitive impact of a new one.”
Following the ruling, issued Monday, Diagne will be able to open her braiding salon at the location she applied for instead of having to move elsewhere.
Channel 2 Action News has reached out to the city for comment and is waiting for their response.
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