RICHARD HOPP SEEKS AN ANTI-COLLECTING AND HOBBY ORDINANCES INJUNCTION

Los Angeles, California – Richard Hopp announced he has filed a civil suit in the Los Angeles Superior Court requesting declaratory relief to determine the validity of City ordinances and seeking an injunction restricting the City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles Police Department and other City agencies from prohibiting enforcement and criminal prosecution of Mr. Hopp's collecting and hobby activities.

Mr. Hopp is and has been an avid collector of books, documents, and ephemera as a hobby for his personal use. He does not hold himself out as a business or occupation with regard to his collecting and hobby activities.

Mr. Hopp actively promotes his collecting and hobby and through advertising in many publications, on websites, and various similar public notices. He attends flea markets, swap meets, trade shows, garage sales, and collector meetings.

Mr. Hopp is not in business as a secondhand book dealer, pawnshop, pawn broker, or seller of any kind of books, documents, and ephemera. He merely collects and seeks to reach a larger audience with regard to the items and subjects in which he has an interest.

The City has enacted a series of ordinances as part of the Municipal Code for the City of Los Angeles relating to the regulation of secondhand book dealers and secondhand dealers businesses which the City seeks to enforce against Mr. Hopp.

The employees of the City and the Los Angeles Police Department have arbitrarily stated that he is a secondhand book dealer and as such is a business, thus requiring him maintain a local police permit and license as a business. City of Los Angeles considers his collecting and hobby activates as an unpermitted and unlicensed business and that will lead to his being subjected to arrest and prosecution.

The California Department of Justice and the City of Los Angeles, Office of Finance has made written determinations and conclusions that he is neither a business nor an occupation, thus not required to obtain any license or permit for his collecting and hobby activities.

These unwarranted actions by City employees subject Mr. Hopp and others like him to potential criminal prosecution and is a violation and interference of free exercise of his right guaranteed under the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution and applicable sections of the California Constitution. The City refuses Mr. Hopp any administrative hearings or public consideration.