Hi there,

I wanted to tell you about what's currently happening in North Dakota. You might remember the North Dakota fiasco from one of my previous emails.

Basically, at this beginning of this year, the ND health department gutted their state's 2017 food freedom law without the legislature's approval.

Now, five bakers in North Dakota, with help from the Institute for Justice, are suing their state to bring their law back.

Although this process started two month ago, the Institute for Justice decided to delay the case to allow the health department to focus on addressing the coronavirus.

But now they're pushing forward again, and as a result, many news articles have picked up the story in the past couple of weeks. Here's a great Forbes article about the lawsuit.

Erica Smith from the Institute for Justice talked about this case a few weeks ago in podcast episode #6, and she had some not-so-nice things to say about ND's health department.

The overall impression I got from Erica was along the lines of "they're going down!" I really think she and the Institute for Justice are not going to let up on this until they get their law back.

Read about the North Dakota lawsuit


Also, if you use Square* to take credit card payments, you may want to know about their rare 20% off discount for their contactless chip card reader (from $49 to $39, until June 1st).

This is the first discount I've ever seen for this device, and that's why I'm mentioning it here. They are doing this as a response to the coronavirus, with markets opening up again and a stronger desire for touchless payments.

I would only recommend buying this if you already do many credit card transactions with Square. It wirelessly connects to your phone and allows you to accept Apple Pay, Google Pay, and the more secure chips in credit cards.

If your business is new, or if you run only a few dozen transactions per month, I'd suggest you keep using the free card reader that you received when signing up for Square. I ran dozens of payments with it last Christmas, and it worked great!

Buy Square's contactless chip card reader for $39 (until June 1st)


David

* In full disclosure, if you click on a Square link and make a purchase, I may get a commission of the sale. But like I said, I only recommend their upgraded card reader if it's right for you... the basic free reader works just fine for most cottage food businesses.