It sounds like a real pisser for the owner of the businesses, but it's hard to take the article seriously when it's so loaded with populist sneering. The first line is the giveaway: "We often hear politicians and pundits denounce property rights" -- do we really? I don't know if I've ever heard a US politician explicitly denounce "property rights" as a broad category. It isn't necessary to keep harping on the broader issue -- just tell the story and it should be clear whose rights are being violated, if any.