Texas Bars Sue Gov. Greg Abbot Over Closures

close quarters for extended periods of time. There's poor air ventilation, and virus particles can spread with people speaking loudly. Sarah Blaskovic, reporter at the Dallas Morning News, joins us for more. Thanks for joining us, Sarah, Thank you. There's several Texas bar owners that have filed a lawsuit against Governor Greg Abbott protesting against the shutdowns. Basically, there's actually bars all across the country that are being shut down in response

to coronavirus. California is another one where the governor is shutting down the bars. It's just kind of this hotbed of spread. They think you're in tight quarters. People are talking very loudly, and they're saying that this is where coronavirus is spreading in the state like Texas, where it's kind of becoming this hotspot. Right now, this action is being taken by the governor. So there's a lot of bars that are filing this lawsuit right now. Sarah tell

us about it. How are the bar owners feeling about all this. There's a group of they say, more than thirty bar owners in Dallas for Worth and some of its suburbs, and they feel unfairly targeted. So their idea here is that sitting in a bar while following social distancing guidelines isn't different than sitting in a restaurant. Yet their bar can't be open and a restaurant can. So what they told me when I interviewed them for the Dallas Wearing News is that they're asking for fair treatment

in this lawsuit. If restaurants can be open at fifty perspect capacity, Let's say they want bars to be open at fifty persec capacity. And instead what has happened is the governor has shut down all bars that sell fifty or more of their growth sales receipts are from alcohol. So basically a majority of their sales come from boots, and it's an interesting dilemma for these people because they can't make any money. Most of these places don't do take out either because the majority of or all of

their business is from alcohol. And they just say it's not fair, and some of the reasoning that they're using, it's tough to really make your case on all of this. They're comparing themselves to nail salons and barbershops and saying, well, you know, some of these places have so much more points of contact with people that they have the same amount of risk, or maybe even more. But part of it is not really that part. It's not the contact

necessarily from the business owners. It's the people because they're congregating in these places. And we've heard more about how coronavirus spreads, and it's in places with that air ventilation, sitting with people for long periods of time, talking loudly, spreading the virus that way. It's those ways that the IRUs is spreading. So that's why bars are being targeted

in this. The bar owners I talked to say that they're following the same rules as everybody else, so they suggest that there aren't people elbow to elbow at the bars like there would have been six months ago. They say that bars have tables too, and that they can move their tables six ft apart. Now, whether they're actually doing that and whether patrons will follow what they say

is a whole different deal. And we've seen a lot of news reports and some politicians have said young people are the ones who are spreading this because they're hanging out in bars too close to one another. And whether that's true or not, it's really really hard to prove. These bar owners say, we're not doing those things, and yet we still can't make money. The lawsuit is a

ten million dollar federal lawsuit. They're looking for some damages there, but they're also looking for an injunction to the order.

What have they said about the order itself? Because the governor in a few days, maybe after the fourth of July weekend and say okay, you know, bars can open back up again or something like that, and going through the lawsuit is a pretty lengthy process, a difficult process to what have they said regarding that the lawsuit you're referring to is not in Dallas specifically, it's in another

part of Texas. But this shows us there's more than one group of bar owners who are interested in suing the governor and t ABC and other folks for this reason. But sure, the lawyer I talked to who's going to file the lawsuited Dallas Fort Worth this week, but he hasn't done it quite yet. I asked him that exact question, Well, what happens if this takes a year? And they basically said they think it's the right thing to do because

they don't want to sit back and do nothing. So, in fact, one bar owners quote was quote, We're not willing to sit by idly while this happened. We won't be treated unfairly. Now, realistically, will this come to pass and change the governor's mind? That's probably not how the legal systm is going to work in this way, but it's a way that there they believe their voice is getting heard. The bar industry in Texas employees over eight people. I know that there's been a few protests from some

bar owners and people that work at them. How have those played out? That has been really interesting here in Texas in my opinion, and people are taking it in different directions. We saw one bar in Burlston, Texas, which is kind of near Fort Worth. The bar invited customers out on Sunday afternoon to the parking lot and they fed them water and cokes because they can't pour any alcohol because bars are shut down. And those bar patrons just held signs that said all kinds of stuff about

how they want to keep the bar open. Some of those people were socially distanced as they held those signs. Most of them were wearing masks. But that was how that one bar dealt with it. Other bars, like we've been talking about, have decided they want to be part

of the lawsuit. One bar in Richardson, Texas, which is just north of Dallas, they just decided they were going to stay open even though the governor said they couldn't, and in fact posted that to Facebook, and so t ABC, which is the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, came and shut them down. You know, you can't stay open when the governor says that you're shut down. The bar owners are really reacting here in lots of different way. Yeah, it's

a tough situation. I know it's been very vocal there in Texas, but this is happening across the country, and I know bar owners are getting squeezed pretty tight on all this. They're one of the first things that are getting shut down all of this, and I know we were reopening things and then it's like the whole pause button hits and it's like when we're pausing you all over again. But what are the bar owners doing to comply with, you know, all the social distancing, especially like

in a small dive bar setting something like that. You know, it's really tough to control the patrons. As you were saying earlier. Right now in Texas, none of them can be open. But in the last couple of weeks. I've

got one example. There's a bar called the Double Wide in Dallas, and the owner sent a fair amount of money to change the bar while they were shut down in April, and so when she reopened just a couple of weeks ago in June, there was a new garage door where there used to be a wall so that you could sit inside part of the bar, but it was breezy, so that they could put that garage door

all the way up. The room where the garage door was used to be a live music venue, and there's no live music right now, and so instead they put tables in there, so they can't have as many people in bars, and they don't want them standing or sitting at the bar near one another. But I start to a whole bunch of bar owners outside of this lawsuit story, who were really, it seemed to me, doing their best.

They're trying to comply with the CDC guidelines, they're keeping within the lower occupancy percentages, and they're trying to make money because a lot of them said, this is what I do, this is my business, this is how I feed my family, or this is what I love to do. Um and now I can't. Sarah Blaskovich, reporter at the Dallas Morning News, thank you very much for joining us. Thanks nice to be here. I'm Ascar Ramirez and this is reopening America. Don't forget effort today's big news stories.

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