Bill Description: Senate Bill 1134 would create a special liquor license for catering businesses that have been in business for at least 5 years.

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Does it violate the principle of equal protection under the law? Examples include laws that discriminate or differentiate based on age, gender, or religion or which apply laws, regulations, rules, or penalties differently based on such characteristics. Conversely, does it restore or protect the principle of equal protection under the law?

Idaho's liquor licensing laws are illogical and discriminatory, creating a significant impediment to market entry and unnecessarily limiting access to both providers and consumers. The current quota-based licensing system should be abolished and replaced with a simple, straightforward, and unlimited licensing system that is low-cost, free of population-based and geographical restrictions, and open to all applicants.

Rather than fix this broken system that creates artificial and economically harmful scarcity, the Legislature has passed numerous carve-outs, exempting various types of businesses. The businesses are not called out by name in Idaho statute, but they are described in enough detail to limit the carve-out to a small number of businesses, or sometimes even just one.

Senate Bill 1134 would create Section 23-903d, Idaho Code, to carve out another exception, this time for a single-event "caterer liquor license" that is only available to an "established caterer," which the bill defines as "a catering business that has been in operation for no less than five (5) years and has catered and will continue to cater no fewer than twenty-five (25) events per year."

This license would "not count toward the limitation on the number of licenses issued according to population." The license also "may not be sold or leased and shall not be transferable to any other caterer."

Payments would come in two parts. The first is a $150 annual fee. The second part consists of $50 payments for "each established caterer liquor license granted for a catering event."

It is appropriate to allow catering businesses to serve liquor regardless of local population-based liquor license caps, but limiting this option only to "established" caterers is a gross injustice to newer businesses. Businesses should be able to compete in the market on an equal legal footing. This licensing carve-out would provide a significant and unfair advantage to older and larger caterers at the expense of their newer and smaller competitors.

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