A D.C. bar that was championed by conservatives earlier this year after it lost its liquor license for violating vaccine rules sued the city’s health department Thursday, alleging the District had no authority to close it.
The Big Board, in Northeast Washington’s H Street corridor, had its liquor license suspended in February after receiving two $1,000 citations and multiple verbal warnings about allowing employees to go unmasked and not checking customers’ vaccination status.
“Until the Mayor change[s] her mind on the orders, I am not going to change mine,” Eric Flannery, the Big Board’s manager, said during one inspection, according to the bar’s suspension notice. The bar reopened in March after raising tens of thousands of dollars from a crowdfunding campaign and paying $4,000 in fines without admitting wrongdoing.
On Thursday, the Big Board filed a lawsuit against the District claiming that Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and the D.C. Council had no right to create mask and vaccine requirements without congressional approval.
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The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said that Congress has a 30-day review period to invalidate legislation — or 90 days in the case of emergency legislation. Amid the pandemic, policymakers ignored this standard, according to the suit.
“The Mayor’s rolling ‘emergency’ orders authorized by the D.C. Council’s successive emergency amendments make a mockery of this constitutional requirement,” the suit said. “The repeated extension of emergency orders for months on end, authorized by the D.C. Council’s emergency legislation — which was not approved by Congress — have thwarted Congress’s reserved constitutional power.”
The suit sought a declaration that the District’s actions were unlawful and unspecified compensatory damages. It cautioned that Bowser might take similar action in the future, for example issuing emergency orders related to monkeypox.
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In an interview, Robert Alt, president and chief executive of the conservative Buckeye Institute and one of Flannery’s attorneys, said the District’s health department had ventured beyond its purview during the pandemic. The department is set up to prevent food-borne illness and keep rats out of restaurants, he said, not make coronavirus rules.
“This really is about the principle that’s larger than the Big Board’s case,” Alt said. “It’s about whether the Constitution sleeps during a pandemic.”
The D.C. attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
As conservatives pushed back against vaccine rules across the country last winter, the Big Board became a mascot for their movement. Lawmakers including Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) stopped by to voice their support.
“It’s a big decision — civil resistance, civil disobedience — when you lose your livelihood,” Paul said at the restaurant in January.
In a February interview, Flannery said taking a stand against vaccine rules was “the right thing to do” because “bars and restaurants should be places where everybody’s welcome.”
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