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You can buy a lot with $150,000 in Milwaukee. That much money will get you a nice single-family home or a veritable fleet of automobiles. It is also, shockingly, the amount of money it takes to buy the government's permission to be in business, at least if you're a taxicab entrepreneur.

A major lawsuit to be filed Tuesday by three Milwaukee taxi drivers and the Institute for Justice seeks to change that.

You see, Milwaukee only allows 321 taxicabs to operate within the entire city. The city government set this arbitrary cap in 1991, and it has ignored repeated calls to raise it. Even though the city now has only one taxi for every 1,850 residents - one of the worst ratios of any major city in the country - and even though almost half the city's taxicabs are owned by a single person, the Common Council refuses to budge.

The upshot of all this is that, if you want to start your own taxicab business, you have to purchase one of the existing taxi permits from a cab owner. That will run you over $150,000 - a price tag that buys you literally nothing except the government's permission to be in business.

Drivers who cannot afford the price tag for their own taxi permit are forced to rent one from an established business, paying up to $1,000 or more every week just for the privilege of being in business. After paying an exorbitant cost just for the right to drive, the typical driver has trouble even making ends meet.

There is no reason things have to be this way. The city government doesn't cap the number of hamburger restaurants or bicycle stores. Just as in these other areas, consumers and entrepreneurs - not the Common Council - are the best judges of how many taxi businesses the city needs.

As explained in an Institute for Justice study, "Unhappy Days for Milwaukee Entrepreneurs," Milwaukee's prohibition on new taxicabs does nothing but funnel money to a small group of entrenched businesses at the expense of entrepreneurs who lose out on opportunities and consumers who face poor service and long wait times.

And Milwaukee is on the wrong side of a national trend toward increasing taxi freedom. In 2006, Minneapolis scrapped its cap on taxi businesses, resulting in immediate growth.

Today, consumers in Minneapolis have twice as many taxis to choose from - and more taxi entrepreneurs get the opportunity to meet that growing demand. Indeed, Minneapolis now has more than twice as many taxis as Milwaukee, with only about half its population.

The time has come for this injustice to end. That is why Milwaukee taxi driver Ghaleb Ibrahim, along with two of his fellow drivers, teamed up with the Institute for Justice to ask the state courts to strike down Milwaukee's cap on taxi businesses. The case makes a simple argument: Drivers such as Ghaleb have a right to earn an honest living, and the government can't take that right away simply to enrich the city's established taxi businesses.

Milwaukee's government cannot be allowed to simply trample on the rights of ordinary entrepreneurs and taxi drivers. In our system of government, courts are supposed to step in where the other branches of government overstep their bounds or abuse their power. To use James Madison's phrase, they are supposed to be "bulwarks" of our liberty.

By putting a stop to Milwaukee's arbitrary limit on new taxi business, the state's courts will be doing exactly that.

Anthony Sanders is an attorney with the Institute for Justice Minnesota Chapter.