A woman who moved from California to Wyoming to escape “increasingly illiberal and imperious… politics” is now suing the northern Wyoming town of Powell — because it denied her request to keep a domesticated pygmy teacup goat.
Venus Bontadelli is asking the U.S. District Court of Wyoming to declare the town’s denial of her exotic pet permit unconstitutional, and to have the town pay her $1 in nominal damages along with attorney fees and costs.
She filed the federal action Tuesday via her attorneys Bridget Conlan and Austin Waisanen, both of the Pacific Legal Foundation.
Bontadelli moved to Wyoming in part because of its apparent “live and let live” and “less government” mantras, the complaint says.
“Unfortunately,” the document continues, “it did not take long for Mrs. Bontadelli to learn that despite Wyoming’s more appealing political climate, local governments in Wyoming also exercise shockingly broad power over the lives and property of citizens in ways that are often difficult to predict or understand.”
The Bontadellis live in Powell. When their oldest daughter graduated in December 2024, someone gave the family a graduation gift: a baby Nigerian pygmy teacup dwarf goat named “Porsche Lane,” says the complaint.
Bontadelli bottle fed the goat and bonded with her, the document says.
The complaint says Nigerian pygmy teacup dwarf goats are “among the most common and docile small-breed goats kept as pets in the United States,” and that the American Dairy Goat Association and American Goat Society recognize the breed as a standard domestic type, not a wild or exotic animal.
They are “quiet, clean, and require far less space and maintenance than dogs of comparable weight,” the complaint says, adding that public health agencies have not identified the breed as inherently hazardous.
‘THEN SOMEONE COMPLAINS’
A subhead in the complaint’s narrative leads with the all-caps, bolded words “THEN SOMEONE COMPLAINS.”
In May when Porsche Lane weighed about 10 pounds and spent most of her time inside, someone complained to the city. A Powell Police Department officer knocked on Bontadelli’s door to tell her someone from “outside of her neighborhood” had complained.
Bontadelli could only keep Porsche Lane if she received an exotic pet permit, the officer added, according to the complaint.
The ordinance says it's unlawful for a person to possess a wild animal or exotic pet within city limits without the permit.
The complaint concedes that Porsche Lane is not a “household pet” under the ordinance’s definitions, so Bontadelli filed her permit application that month.
Powell Police Chief Jim Rhea in a June 4 letter to Bontadelli wrote that the goat falls outside the law, because state statute specifically calls out goats as “livestock” — not pets; and because Powell ordinance specifically excludes goats from its definition of “household pet.”
Rhea confirmed in a Thursday interview with Cowboy State Daily, that he believes the law didn’t leave him room to approve the application, unless a law change came first.
“It was considered livestock, and there’s no provision for that,” he said.
He showed Bontadelli how to lodge an appeal with the city council.
Rhea told Cowboy State Daily that it’s his understanding that the appeal would be for Bontadelli to request a rule change.
Bontadelli’s complaint disagrees with this reading of the law, saying the ordinance “expressly provides that a person may keep a goat – or any other nonvenomous animal – as a pet with an exotic pet permit.”
Bontadelli appealed June 7 to the city council. She wrote that her goat is quiet compared to the “dogs that bark all hours of the night” and that her neighbors “adore” the goat.
Some neighbors wrote letters in support of the goat.
On July 7, the city council unanimously denied Bontadelli’s appeal to keep the goat, though, the complaint says, “no member of the public spoke against” her permit request.
Multiple city council members indicated they agree goats are specifically excluded from being permitted since the definition of “household pets” excludes goats, the document adds.
Rhea told Cowboy State Daily he’s not been made aware that the goat is a nuisance.
Due Process
The lawsuit accuses the city of denying Bontadelli her rights of procedural due process and substantive due process.
It also says the denial of her permit was arbitrary and stemmed from “unfettered power to decide who shall be allowed to keep an exotic pet.”
The complaint invokes Article 1, Section 7 of the Wyoming Constitution:
“Absolute, arbitrary power over the lives, liberty and property of freemen exists nowhere in a republic, not even in the largest majority.”
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
