When St. Louis attorney Matthew Chase decided to eat at Simon Kohn’s restaurant on Monday, he was seated at a table inside.
“I was pleasantly surprised,” Chase told the St. Louis Record.
That’s because indoor dining at St. Louis County restaurants had been banned by County Executive Sam Page since Nov. 12 and deemed illegal in order to curb the spread of COVID-19 under a Safer at Home order.
“Sam Page has been overstepping his authority in an extreme manner and nobody seems to care,” Chase said in an interview.
Page, a medical doctor, announced that restaurants could resume indoor service beginning on Monday, Jan. 4.
“It's interesting to me that he is allowing indoor dining to reopen because I believe Sam Page, like many other politicians who are issuing these draconian restrictions upon our liberties, is on a power trip,” Chase said. “During all this, he got re-elected resoundingly, which gives him a reason to believe he's on the right path.”
Chase claims the coronavirus doesn’t legally justify lockdown measures.
As of Jan. 6, there were 432,000 reported coronavirus cases statewide resulting in 6,115 fatalities, according to Missouri’s COVID-19 dashboard.
“I am a constitutional purist and there is sufficient case law along with the U.S. Constitution to say these orders are lawless,” he said. “They are unconstitutional on their face.”
Page’s decision to withdraw the restriction has arrived the same week that 975 doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine were delivered to the St. Louis County Department of Public Health (DPH), according to media reports.
“The vaccine has to be playing a role because we are rolling it out quickly,” Chase said. “The bottom line is that people can make their own decision about whether or not they want to take the chance to eat inside a restaurant.”
As previously reported in St. Louis Record, the Missouri Restaurant Association along with 40 restaurant operators sued Saint Louis County, County Executive Page and Emily Doucette, acting director, and chief medical officer of the St. Louis County Department of Public Health in St. Louis Circuit Court, alleging the ban on indoor dining is unconstitutional.
“Doucette states in the order that restaurants in violation face criminal penalties, civil penalties, and even forced closure,” plaintiff attorney Timothy Belz wrote in the complaint. “Plaintiffs, in addition to the Missouri Restaurant Association, are local restaurant owners who depend on restaurants for their livelihoods and to provide jobs to others. They believe in safely operating their restaurants by social distancing, wearing masks, sanitizing surfaces, and limiting capacity, but they also believe that they must operate with indoor dining to economically survive.”
Now that the restriction on indoor dining has been lifted, the lawsuit will potentially be mooted, according to Chase, leaving restaurant owners unlikely to collect an award for damages.
“Usually if a lawsuit is dismissed as moot, litigants will try to redraft it,” he said.