A city agency yesterday dismissed a discrimination complaint against Geno's Steaks for its speak-English sign, halting a case that thrust shop owner Joey Vento into the national spotlight of the contentious immigration debate.

A split three-member panel of the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations ruled that a sign in the South Philadelphia cheesesteak shop did not convey a message that service would be refused to non-English speakers.

"The bottom line is that I didn't do anything wrong," said Vento, 68, who maintained that the sign was a political statement and that no customers were ever turned away. "It's a good victory."

Had the commission ruled against Geno's, it could have imposed fines and have moved to revoke Vento's business license.

The case, filed 21 months ago, consumed hundreds of hours of legal time and was the subject of a seven-hour hearing in December. It attracted national attention to Vento and his sign: "This is America. When ordering, please speak English."

The millionaire businessman said the commission's action was an attempt to infringe on his freedom of speech - he refused to remove the sign, and put a second one on the bumper of his orange Hummer. Some commentators and Web sites portrayed Vento as the heroic victim of an overreaching government's attempt to impose political correctness.

Indeed, while branding the commission's action "ridiculous," Vento said he was grateful for the publicity.

"They made me famous throughout the world," Vento said in an interview from his home in New Jersey. "I'm way ahead of the game. I became a hero. I've got to thank them for that."

Shannon L. Goessling, executive director of the Southeastern Legal Foundation, a public-interest law firm in Atlanta that championed Vento's case, complained that the government spent a "tremendous amount of energy" to "silence" Vento and said that he would consider filing suit to recover the cost of his defense.

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