San Juan County’s eight-month-old rules on selling products on the street corner are dead and gone.

They’ve been supplanted, however, by an ordinance which some claim is equally unconstitutional and in some ways is even worse.

The San Juan County Council on Tuesday voted without dissent to repeal a street-vending ordinance which it approved in July and to replace it with a new set of rules that prohibit vendors from using the public-right-of-way – sidewalks and streets – as a location to set up shop.

Like the now-defunct vending ordinance, the new rules apply only within the boundaries of the county’s unincorporated urban growth areas, Eastsound and Lopez Village, and in the activity centers of Deer Harbor, Olga and Orcas Village.

Much like the vending ordinance, the newly approved prohibition on peddling in the public-right-of-way does not extend to vendors who are on the move, like those with ice cream carts and hot dog wagons. Exempt as well are the many civic, charitable, fraternal and non-profit groups, such as the Girls Scouts, Kiwanis and the PTA, which periodically use sidewalks and street corners for various fund-raising events.

Like the old ordinance, those who violate the new rules are subject to a $250 fine.

Playing favorites is only part of the problem, according to attorney Michael Bindas of the Washington chapter of the Institute for Justice. But it’s enough for the new legislation to be rejected, Bindas said in testifying against the new rules at a March 30 public hearing.

The Institute, with Bindas as lead attorney, took the county to court over the vending ordinance in September on behalf of Lopez Island’s Gary Franco, whose activities as a vendor in Eastsound prove a catalyst in prompting county officials to clamp down on curbside commerce. The new rules will be challenged in court as well, Bindas said.

“The Washington Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the privileges and immunities clause prohibits a municipality from restricting one person or group’s right to sell what others are appropriately free to sell,” Bindas said. “After all, it is the act with which the law is concerned, rather than the business in which one may be engaged when he commits it.”

Under the old rules, vendors were required to obtain written consent of the businesses near the location where they intended to set up shop and to purchase a permit, at $50, for each day that he or she intended to conduct business.

According to deputy prosecutor Karen Vedder, the newly minted prohibition on peddling is rooted in an “inherent right” of the county to manage public-right-of-ways and to determine who has the privilege of using them.

Bindas does not dispute the county has authority to “manage” its right-of-ways. For example, he said, setting up standards for table sizes and for setbacks from storefronts, corners and curbs are appropriate measures for the county to pursue.

Nevertheless, he contends state law forbids the county from banning commerce from its sidewalks and streets, and from playing favorites in determining who can peddle products in the pubic-right-of-way.

“Currently, brick-and-mortar businesses have the ability to veto a vendor’s ability to earn a living,” Bindas said. “The proposed ordinance would actually codify the exercise of that veto by permanently banning (Gary Franco) and other hardworking vendors from earning an honest living in their chosen occupation.”