SAN DIEGO (KGTV) – Restaurants are hanging on the wire due to pandemic restrictions and a lawyer in Encinitas is keeping it open with the help of the constitution.
“They are in a battle for their own survival,” said Michael Curran, partner of Curran & Curran Law.
According to Yelp, nearly 98,000 businesses across the country are permanently closed.
“You know we sat on our couch,” Curran said as he and his wife tried to find ways to help, “[we were] investigate the first amendment and think why restaurants can not protest peacefully while running their restaurants? And the legal reason is that there is no reason why. ‘
Curran said the constitution would protect their livelihoods, just as it protects someone’s right to hold a sign during a protest.
“The highest law in the country is the constitution. It is in full force at all times, in an alleged pandemic and not,” he said.
This comes after Catherine Blakespear, mayor of Encinitas, said on Thursday she would take away street and sidewalk permits from restaurants that oppose the order.
She maintained her position in a press release issued to ABC 10News on Friday, reading in a section ‘At the moment, with only the take out, we can not have restaurants that use the public legal route to violate the province’s health orders not.’
On her website, she said the pandemic is a “serious health emergency – we all need to do better.” She cited an increase in coronavirus cases in the past month.
On Wednesday, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria signed an executive order demanding accountability.
Gloria said he ordered the San Diego Police Department and asked the city attorney to follow fines and other enforcement actions against serious offenders and people who violate health orders.
“Throughout human history, we have never really closed for a pandemic,” said Dr. Bill Wells, mayor of El Cajon, said.
He was a proponent of businesses staying open through the pandemic, saying that locks do not work and that there is no ‘hiding for the virus’.
Dr. Wells said the future will pose serious economic challenges, “I do not think anyone has any form of what it is going to take to get back to any semblance of normal. I think it’s going to be a multi-year process, probably a decade. ‘
He hopes that vaccines will turn the tide and that we will all learn something from this.
“I hope that as a society we will learn something from this and look at our laws so that no one under the guise of a crisis can take over an entire state like California with 40 million people with no one to answer for and to get all their guidance from public health officials who are completely unelected and have a very narrow focus, ‘he said.
Curran said his clients hope they do not have to go to court, but that they are ready to fight if necessary.