The Powell City Council barred a woman from keeping her pet pygmy goat in town last year, but after getting sued over their decision, the councilors are reversing course.

As part of a settlement reached on Thursday, the city has agreed to issue an exotic pet permit to Venus Bontadelli for her goat, Porsche Lane. Bontadelli’s attorney called it “a complete victory.”

“I think Powell recognized that there’s not really a good reason for keeping Ms. Bontadelli from keeping this little goat,” Austin Waisanen of the Pacific Legal Foundation said in a Friday interview. The deal calls for the city to issue a five-year permit for Porsche Lane that could be renewed. Bontadelli had originally requested a temporary permit while she and her family looked for a new home in rural Park County.

Mayor John Wetzel declined to comment on the settlement on Friday, saying he wanted to wait until the agreement has been finalized.

When they denied the permit for Porsche Lane last summer, council members said they didn’t believe the existing ordinance allowed them to permit goats in town — and they expressed worries about the precedent they might set by making an exception. However, in a November suit filed in Wyoming’s U.S. District Court, Bontadelli and her attorneys contended the city’s permitting system lacked any objective standards and the council’s denial was “arbitrary and not rationally related to any legitimate governmental interest.”

The trouble started in late May, when someone who lives outside of Bontadelli’s East Adams Street neighborhood saw Porsche Lane and made a complaint. The Powell Police Department’s community service officer responded and explained to Bontadelli that she couldn’t keep the goat in town; he also advised that, under the city’s ordinances, she would need to get rid of eight of her 12 chickens.

Bontadelli has said the news came as a surprise. When she and her husband bought their home in 2024, Bontadelli said their realtor told them there’d be no issue with keeping animals.

Bontadelli took her case to the council in July, providing letters of support for Porsche Lane from two neighbors. However, the council remained concerned about precedent.

She then filed suit in November, represented at no cost by the Pacific Legal Foundation, a firm that “defends Americans from government overreach and abuse.”

The city was originally due to file a response to the suit in early December, but that deadline was pushed back so the parties could explore a potential settlement.

The city council held a series of executive sessions to discuss the litigation, most recently on Jan. 5. At the end of that discussion, draft city minutes show the council unanimously voted to direct the city attorney to prepare some kind of “response.”

However, on Thursday — a day before the city’s response was due in federal court — Waisanen and the city’s counsel in the case, Tom Thompson of the Wyoming Local Government Liability Pool, filed a notice saying they’d settled. Once the agreement is finalized, the suit will be dismissed and “no further proceedings before the Court in this matter shall be necessary,” the attorneys wrote.

Presiding U.S. District Judge Scott Skavdahl gave the parties until Feb. 9 to file the appropriate paperwork.

While it’s not a part of the settlement, Waisanen said he’s gotten the impression that the city may decide to revisit its ordinance.

“I think the settlement recognizes that there’s some issues with the ordinance, particularly the due process issue we identified,” he said, “which is … government can regulate property and harmless uses of property, but has to tell people what the rules are.”

Councilors could theoretically approve the settlement at their Monday, Jan. 19 meeting.