The debate that had consumed Sean Young’s life for nearly three years revolved around a painting of doughnuts, cookies, a cinnamon roll, a raspberry turnover and a blueberry muffin.
Students at a high school near Young’s New Hampshire bakery created the mural above the shop’s front door in June 2022. But the town of Conway told Young the painting wasn’t a mural, it was a sign that exceeded the town’s legal size limit and would need to be taken down.
Young left the mural up, and sued the town the next year, claiming its ordinance violates the First Amendment. On Monday, the legal battle resulted in a sweet ending for Young, 54.
A judge wrote in an order that Conway’s enforcement of its ordinance against the painting is “unconstitutional” and “operationally illogical,” ruling that the mural can remain in front of the shop, Leavitt’s Country Bakery. For Young and Ashton-Rose Gallant, one of the student painters, the news brought relief.
As Conway fought to remove the mural, Gallant, 19, said he sometimes wished he “had never painted the mural” because of the town’s backlash.
“But in the end,” he said, “I’m really glad I painted it.”
After Young bought Leavitt’s Country Bakery in the spring of 2021, it became known as one of New Hampshire’s top doughnut shops. Its most popular pastries include handmade apple fritters, honey-dipped doughnuts and chocolate frosted doughnuts.
For years, the front of the shop was red and featured the bakery’s logo, an image of a blackbird sitting atop a pie. But in the spring of 2022, an art teacher from Kennett High School in North Conway, New Hampshire, was looking for a place in the community where her students could start a project. Young offered the front of his bakery.
Students wanted to create something that reflected the east New Hampshire region, where skiers flock in the winter and hikers and water tubers come in the summer. They never thought people would interpret the mural as a sign, Gallant said.
The result showed a line of pastries – including a chocolate frosted doughnut with colorful sprinkles, a meringue cookie, a chocolate chip cookie, a strawberry frosted doughnut, a sugar cookie and a Boston crème – that represented the nearby Mount Washington Valley mountains. In the mural, a sun rises over the pastries, creating bright rays.
Students, their families and community members attended the mural’s unveiling in June 2022. Gallant said the mural was “brightening up the valley.”
That changed about a week later, when a municipal code enforcement officer who had seen the mural in a local newspaper told Young that the painting was a sign because it advertised the bakery’s products, and at about 91 square feet, it was roughly four times as big as what the town allowed.
Young could be fined $275 every day that the mural was on the building and face a misdemeanor for violating the code.
“I thought right from the beginning, ‘Something’s not right here,’” Young said.
If the painting didn’t show products sold in the store or was placed outside the bakery’s property, it would be classified as a mural and could remain, according to Monday’s order.
In the months after Young received the initial notice, Conway’s zoning board denied Young’s appeal of the enforcement officer’s assessment and his efforts to keep the painting.
“It’s a zoning ordinance, which was enacted by the legislative body, which are the voters of the town who are here,” John Colbath, the zoning board chair, said at a meeting in August 2022, according to a recording of the meeting. “And there is a process for changing it if they don’t like it.”
Gallant, who began working as a server at the bakery in August 2022, said he felt pride every time he walked under his mural to start work. He said customers encouraged the bakery to keep the painting.
Near the end of 2022, the town told Young that they would begin fining him if he didn’t remove the painting, according to Young’s attorneys. Young refused and began working with the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm that sent a letter to Conway in November 2022 asserting that the ordinance is vague and unconstitutional.
In January 2023, Young filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire that argued that the town violated his free-speech rights. He requested $1 in damages, saying he mainly wanted the town to stop attempting to remove the mural. A judge granted a temporary restraining order that allowed the mural to remain until the case finished.
Attorneys representing Conway argued in court that the town restricts the size of signs to preserve the town’s safety and “natural beauty” and enforce “equal treatment” to all residents.
But Judge Joseph Laplante wrote in his order Monday that the town’s enforcement of its ordinance had “no rational connection to any of [the town’s] stated interests” and “would not pass any level of scrutiny.”
Brooke Shilo, an attorney representing Conway, wrote in an email to The Washington Post that the town was “disappointed” by the ruling.
“The Town will continue to work conscientiously and in good faith to ensure that the constitutional rights of all are not infringed,” Shilo wrote, “while maintaining public safety and Conway’s natural beauty.”
After his attorneys informed him of the decision Monday afternoon, Young said he called his staff and his wife to rejoice. He also called Gallant, who said he hopes the mural won’t remind people about the debate, but will simply make them happy.
The project partly inspired Gallant’s dream to become a tattoo artist, which he is pursuing while studying liberal arts at North Shore Community College in Danvers, Massachusetts.
Young said the bakery will celebrate the ruling later this week – maybe by giving a free doughnut to anyone who walks under the mural.
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Marisa Iati contributed to this report.
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