Speaker 1: It's Thursday, July two. I'm oscar A Mirrors from the
Speaker 1: Daily Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America.
Speaker 1: Several Texas bar owners have filed a lawsuit against Governor
Speaker 1: Greg Abbott over his order to shut down bars for
Speaker 1: a second time since the pandemic began. Bar owners feel
Speaker 1: like they're being unfairly targeted when restaurants that serve alcohol
Speaker 1: can remain open and other businesses can continue to operate.
Speaker 1: Bars are especially vulnerable because people tend to gather in
Speaker 1: close quarters for extended periods of time. There's poor air ventilation,
Speaker 1: and virus particles can spread with people speaking loudly. Sarah Blaskovic,
Speaker 1: reporter at the Dallas Morning News, joins us for more.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, Sarah, Thank you. There's several Texas
Speaker 1: bar owners that have filed a lawsuit against Governor Greg
Speaker 1: Abbott protesting against the shutdowns. Basically, there's actually bars all
Speaker 1: across the country that are being shut down in response
Speaker 1: to coronavirus. California is another one where the governor is
Speaker 1: shutting down the bars. It's just kind of this hotbed
Speaker 1: of spread. They think you're in tight quarters. People are
Speaker 1: talking very loudly, and they're saying that this is where
Speaker 1: coronavirus is spreading in the state like Texas, where it's
Speaker 1: kind of becoming this hotspot. Right now, this action is
Speaker 1: being taken by the governor. So there's a lot of
Speaker 1: bars that are filing this lawsuit right now. Sarah tell
Speaker 1: us about it. How are the bar owners feeling about
Speaker 1: all this. There's a group of they say, more than
Speaker 1: thirty bar owners in Dallas for Worth and some of
Speaker 1: its suburbs, and they feel unfairly targeted. So their idea
Speaker 1: here is that sitting in a bar while following social
Speaker 1: distancing guidelines isn't different than sitting in a restaurant. Yet
Speaker 1: their bar can't be open and a restaurant can. So
Speaker 1: what they told me when I interviewed them for the
Speaker 1: Dallas Wearing News is that they're asking for fair treatment
Speaker 1: in this lawsuit. If restaurants can be open at fifty
Speaker 1: perspect capacity, Let's say they want bars to be open
Speaker 1: at fifty persec capacity. And instead what has happened is
Speaker 1: the governor has shut down all bars that sell fifty
Speaker 1: or more of their growth sales receipts are from alcohol.
Speaker 1: So basically a majority of their sales come from boots,
Speaker 1: and it's an interesting dilemma for these people because they
Speaker 1: can't make any money. Most of these places don't do
Speaker 1: take out either because the majority of or all of
Speaker 1: their business is from alcohol. And they just say it's
Speaker 1: not fair, and some of the reasoning that they're using,
Speaker 1: it's tough to really make your case on all of this.
Speaker 1: They're comparing themselves to nail salons and barbershops and saying, well,
Speaker 1: you know, some of these places have so much more
Speaker 1: points of contact with people that they have the same
Speaker 1: amount of risk, or maybe even more. But part of
Speaker 1: it is not really that part. It's not the contact
Speaker 1: necessarily from the business owners. It's the people because they're
Speaker 1: congregating in these places. And we've heard more about how
Speaker 1: coronavirus spreads, and it's in places with that air ventilation,
Speaker 1: sitting with people for long periods of time, talking loudly,
Speaker 1: spreading the virus that way. It's those ways that the
Speaker 1: IRUs is spreading. So that's why bars are being targeted
Speaker 1: in this. The bar owners I talked to say that
Speaker 1: they're following the same rules as everybody else, so they
Speaker 1: suggest that there aren't people elbow to elbow at the
Speaker 1: bars like there would have been six months ago. They
Speaker 1: say that bars have tables too, and that they can
Speaker 1: move their tables six ft apart. Now, whether they're actually
Speaker 1: doing that and whether patrons will follow what they say
Speaker 1: is a whole different deal. And we've seen a lot
Speaker 1: of news reports and some politicians have said young people
Speaker 1: are the ones who are spreading this because they're hanging
Speaker 1: out in bars too close to one another. And whether
Speaker 1: that's true or not, it's really really hard to prove.
Speaker 1: These bar owners say, we're not doing those things, and
Speaker 1: yet we still can't make money. The lawsuit is a
Speaker 1: ten million dollar federal lawsuit. They're looking for some damages there,
Speaker 1: but they're also looking for an injunction to the order.
Speaker 1: What have they said about the order itself? Because the
Speaker 1: governor in a few days, maybe after the fourth of
Speaker 1: July weekend and say okay, you know, bars can open
Speaker 1: back up again or something like that, and going through
Speaker 1: the lawsuit is a pretty lengthy process, a difficult process
Speaker 1: to what have they said regarding that the lawsuit you're
Speaker 1: referring to is not in Dallas specifically, it's in another
Speaker 1: part of Texas. But this shows us there's more than
Speaker 1: one group of bar owners who are interested in suing
Speaker 1: the governor and t ABC and other folks for this reason.
Speaker 1: But sure, the lawyer I talked to who's going to
Speaker 1: file the lawsuited Dallas Fort Worth this week, but he
Speaker 1: hasn't done it quite yet. I asked him that exact question, Well,
Speaker 1: what happens if this takes a year? And they basically
Speaker 1: said they think it's the right thing to do because
Speaker 1: they don't want to sit back and do nothing. So,
Speaker 1: in fact, one bar owners quote was quote, We're not
Speaker 1: willing to sit by idly while this happened. We won't
Speaker 1: be treated unfairly. Now, realistically, will this come to pass
Speaker 1: and change the governor's mind? That's probably not how the
Speaker 1: legal systm is going to work in this way, but
Speaker 1: it's a way that there they believe their voice is
Speaker 1: getting heard. The bar industry in Texas employees over eight people.
Speaker 1: I know that there's been a few protests from some
Speaker 1: bar owners and people that work at them. How have
Speaker 1: those played out? That has been really interesting here in
Speaker 1: Texas in my opinion, and people are taking it in
Speaker 1: different directions. We saw one bar in Burlston, Texas, which
Speaker 1: is kind of near Fort Worth. The bar invited customers
Speaker 1: out on Sunday afternoon to the parking lot and they
Speaker 1: fed them water and cokes because they can't pour any
Speaker 1: alcohol because bars are shut down. And those bar patrons
Speaker 1: just held signs that said all kinds of stuff about
Speaker 1: how they want to keep the bar open. Some of
Speaker 1: those people were socially distanced as they held those signs.
Speaker 1: Most of them were wearing masks. But that was how
Speaker 1: that one bar dealt with it. Other bars, like we've
Speaker 1: been talking about, have decided they want to be part
Speaker 1: of the lawsuit. One bar in Richardson, Texas, which is
Speaker 1: just north of Dallas, they just decided they were going
Speaker 1: to stay open even though the governor said they couldn't,
Speaker 1: and in fact posted that to Facebook, and so t ABC,
Speaker 1: which is the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, came and shut
Speaker 1: them down. You know, you can't stay open when the
Speaker 1: governor says that you're shut down. The bar owners are
Speaker 1: really reacting here in lots of different way. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a tough situation. I know it's been very vocal there
Speaker 1: in Texas, but this is happening across the country, and
Speaker 1: I know bar owners are getting squeezed pretty tight on
Speaker 1: all this. They're one of the first things that are
Speaker 1: getting shut down all of this, and I know we
Speaker 1: were reopening things and then it's like the whole pause
Speaker 1: button hits and it's like when we're pausing you all
Speaker 1: over again. But what are the bar owners doing to
Speaker 1: comply with, you know, all the social distancing, especially like
Speaker 1: in a small dive bar setting something like that. You know,
Speaker 1: it's really tough to control the patrons. As you were
Speaker 1: saying earlier. Right now in Texas, none of them can
Speaker 1: be open. But in the last couple of weeks. I've
Speaker 1: got one example. There's a bar called the Double Wide
Speaker 1: in Dallas, and the owner sent a fair amount of
Speaker 1: money to change the bar while they were shut down
Speaker 1: in April, and so when she reopened just a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks ago in June, there was a new garage
Speaker 1: door where there used to be a wall so that
Speaker 1: you could sit inside part of the bar, but it
Speaker 1: was breezy, so that they could put that garage door
Speaker 1: all the way up. The room where the garage door
Speaker 1: was used to be a live music venue, and there's
Speaker 1: no live music right now, and so instead they put
Speaker 1: tables in there, so they can't have as many people
Speaker 1: in bars, and they don't want them standing or sitting
Speaker 1: at the bar near one another. But I start to
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of bar owners outside of this lawsuit story,
Speaker 1: who were really, it seemed to me, doing their best.
Speaker 1: They're trying to comply with the CDC guidelines, they're keeping
Speaker 1: within the lower occupancy percentages, and they're trying to make
Speaker 1: money because a lot of them said, this is what
Speaker 1: I do, this is my business, this is how I
Speaker 1: feed my family, or this is what I love to do.
Speaker 1: Um and now I can't. Sarah Blaskovich, reporter at the
Speaker 1: Dallas Morning News, thank you very much for joining us.
Speaker 1: Thanks nice to be here. I'm Ascar Ramirez and this
Speaker 1: is reopening America. Don't forget effort today's big news stories.
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