Bureaucracy Without Brakes: Overregulation Closes Home-Based Garage

For 24 years, Gene Weierbach has operated his home-based car garage on his rural 16-acre property near Allentown, Pennsylvania. A well-loved mechanic, Gene chose this arrangement so he could help his wife Debbie care for their adult son, who is severely autistic and nonverbal, and sometimes experiences episodes that require Gene’s presence.

For years this arrangement was a non-issue with their township, North Whitehall. But things changed in 2023 after Gene had a falling out with Township Supervisor Dennis Klusaritz. Klusaritz, who had been bringing cars to Gene since 2021, felt that Gene had done a poor job and overcharged for work on an old BMW. As a result, Gene politely suggested Klusaritz take his business elsewhere. In response, Klusaritz asked the township zoning police to investigate Gene’s business.

As it turns out, Gene’s business is technically violating a zoning ordinance that bans home “auto-repair garages.” Despite having never enforced this law on Gene in over two decades, and despite the unprotested existence of other home garages in the township that also technically violate this law, the town hit Gene with a cease-and-desist order on June 13, 2023.

Responding to the order, the Weierbachs applied for a variance to continue operating. In October, four months later, the Zoning Hearing Board granted the variance with conditions. But Klusaritz was not content to let that decision stand. The Township, through its Board of Supervisors — chaired by Klusaritz himself — appealed the decision.

The case was remanded back to the Zoning Hearing Board, and after a long series of hearings, the Board finally issued its new decision on July 30 of this year: the variance was denied.

Refusing to give up the fight, the Weierbachs are now working with the Institute for Justice — a public-interest law firm — on the next steps of their case. The Institute submitted a Challenge and Petition for Curative Amendment on the Weierbachs’ behalf on August 28, arguing that the zoning ordinance in question and the selective enforcement against their business violate the Pennsylvania Constitution.

“A powerful politician’s personal vendetta is not a legitimate reason for the government to shut down a business,” said IJ Senior Attorney Ari Bargil. “It is clear that the only reason Gene received a cease-and-desist order was because of Supervisor Klusaritz’s personal beef with him. That’s not just unfair, it’s unconstitutional.”

“Working on cars is my passion, and being able to do so from my own home ensures I can be there for my son when he needs me,” said Gene. “For more than 20 years, this set-up has worked perfectly for me, Debbie, our son, our customers, and our neighbors.”

What makes this story especially infuriating is that Gene is known in his community as one of the most upstanding, professional, and competent car mechanics around. One hundred percent of his 17 reviews on Google gave him a perfect five stars, and the comments from his customers are glowing.

“He is not only the best mechanic that I have ever met, but he is honest, reasonably priced, and always takes the time to do the job right, explaining everything that he does along the way,” said one reviewer. “This is the best auto repair period,” said another. “He is the best diagnostic tech bar none. I have had the pleasure to use Gene for many years and he has always done a GREAT job with all of my vehicles.”

Other comments include: “Gene has saved me thousands of dollars,” “Gene is technically brilliant, clever and cost conscious. I trust him completely,” and “I heard so many great things about Gene and how thorough he is and everyone who recommended him was beyond right! My car runs better than ever!”

One can’t help but get the impression that this legal nightmare could not have happened to a better guy.

Legislating for ‘Everyone’

While the abuse-of-power issue is clearly present here, another issue this story raises is how sweeping regulations are often inappropriate in unique situations. Ordinances that may sound relatively reasonable on their face, like prohibiting home-based garage businesses, often become clearly unreasonable in certain exceptional circumstances, like when a mechanic on a secluded 16-acre property needs to be close to home during work hours to care for a disabled son.

The Institute for Justice highlighted the problem of sweeping regulations in its Petition. “Instead of giving Gene’s particular use of property (as a mechanic’s shop) a special exemption,” they wrote, “[the Township] should fix the root of the problem: the categorical prohibition of certain home occupations through zoning irrespective of the individualized impacts (or lack thereof) that specific proposed uses of property would cause.”

The existence of variances is an acknowledgement that unique circumstances warrant unique treatment. Blanket laws just don’t make sense in some areas, which is why there is a legal process for creating exceptions. But as this story highlights, getting a variance can be a tricky process, even when you have a very good reason to have one. What’s more, many other kinds of regulation don’t allow exceptions at all, even when the result is patently ridiculous.

I’m reminded of a story I came across at an outdoor-adventure camp I used to work for. They had just finished constructing a new building, and the main stairway had a state-of-the-art wheelchair lift. One day, as we were walking by, the Director of the camp pointed it out to me. “That lift cost us tens of thousands of dollars,” he said, “and it will maybe be used once or twice in the next twenty years. Isn’t that crazy? Thousands of dollars for a single ride!”

He explained that they were required to install it because the building code now requires a lift for that kind of stairwell in new buildings, with the idea of improving accessibility. They tried to explain to regulators that, due to the nature of the camp, practically the entire rest of the site was inaccessible, and almost all the activities they offer require able-bodied people, so they essentially never have people who require a wheelchair on site. The lift would not be improving accessibility; it would just be a giant waste of money. But it was to no avail. And so the lift was installed, becoming a conspicuous monument to the senselessness of blanket regulations.

Countless other examples of sweeping regulations being inappropriate in unique circumstances can be found all over the place. In pharmaceuticals, for instance, compassionate-use and right-to-try legislation has been put forward to allow terminally ill patients to access non-FDA approved experimental treatments. The idea is that people in exceptional circumstances should not have to abide by restrictions that were designed for normal circumstances, because it just doesn’t make sense.

While it’s reassuring that there are some legal pathways to accommodate these exceptions, such as zoning variances and right-to-try, it’s also clear, as mentioned above, that these pathways are often difficult to navigate (if they exist at all). The result is an immense amount of absurdity and waste.

Now, some would say that the remedy is to make the existing exception pathways easier to use, and to create ones where they don’t exist. But another takeaway, as the Institute for Justice suggested, might be that we should question the extent to which sweeping legislation is enacted in the first place.

When you boil it down, a typical policy proposal essentially says: “Everyone should have to do X.” We use that word everyone flippantly, but it’s really quite a big word. Thousands, or, on the state and national level, millions and tens of millions, will have to comply with this law. People from all walks of life, of all ages and circumstances, both ordinary and exceptional. Everyone is an inflexible word, a word that tolerates no deviation, no customization, no lack of conformity even in the most extreme cases.

I think we forget sometimes how different people are from one another. We forget that other people’s circumstances, their culture, their habits, are often completely foreign to us. And then we issue these totalizing prescriptions as if we knew for every single one of the thousands of individual cases what the right course of action should be.

The problem of exceptional circumstances is one reason why those who favor liberty often champion bringing laws down to the more local level as much as possible. At least then “everyone” is a few thousand rather than a few million, so there are fewer places where the law is inappropriate. But even in a population of thousands, there are bound to be people in unique situations, like the Weierbachs. Even at a local level, the concept of everyone should be used sparingly, treated with care and diligence, with due respect for the great power and rigidity that it implies. There are very few rules that truly make sense for absolutely everybody.

The word everyone is like a machine gun. With the slightest pull of the trigger, immense destruction can be wrought. With the slightest stroke of a pen, thousands are suddenly bound by new laws, forced to change their patterns of behavior, make new investments or withdraw old ones, destroy valuable property, abandon profitable lines of business, and so on. We don’t use a machine gun carelessly, because we respect the power it contains, we respect that a lot of damage can come from the tiniest trigger pull. 

So why do we use the concept of everyone so carelessly? Why do we seem to have no respect, no caution, for the immense amount of damage that can be caused by the simplest writing down on an official piece of paper “Everyone must abide by law X”?

What if the problem with our political culture is not so much the content of the laws, but the uncompromising vastness of their application?