LOS ANGELES—Last week, as AVN reported, a judge in San Diego County ruled that two strip clubs there may open their doors in defiance of orders to remain closed from Governor Gavin Newsom (pictured), as part of the state’s COVID-19 pandemic health restrictions.
But now, a three-judge appeals court panel has blocked the lower court judge’s order, forcing the strip clubs to remain closed. Last week, San Diego Superior Court Judge Joel Wohlfeil held that his ruling not only applied to the two clubs — Cheetahs Gentlemen’s Club and Pacers Showgirls International — but to any establishment, strip club or not, providing “restaurant service.”
But before most of those businesses were able to reopen, the one-paragraph order by California’s Fourth District Court if Appeals put the kibosh on Wohlfeil’s order, forcing strip clubs and restaurants to remain shuttered while the state appeals the earlier ruling.
On Friday, the state filed an emergency request for a stay on Wohlfeil’s order at the Fourth Circuit, which the judges quickly granted.
“In the midst of the worst surge in the COVID-19 pandemic ... a single trial court judge has unilaterally thwarted public efforts to avert that looming catastrophe, by issuing an injunction that allows all restaurants in San Diego County to reopen without any restriction, contrary to the orders and judgment of the State’s top health officials,” lawyers for the state said in their court filing.
Newsom and the state lawyers contended that Wohlfeil’s order was an example of judicial overreach, extending far beyond what the two strip clubs had sought in their initial lawsuit against the state’s COVID restrictions.
The latest closure orders affecting strip clubs and restaurant businesses were triggered when hospitals in the Southern California region fell below 15 percent of their total intensive care unit bed capacity. In San Diego County, ICU capacity bottomed out at zero percent https://www.10news.com/news/local-news/san-diego-appeals-court-freezes-strip-club-ruling-closing-restaurants-again last week amind the recd-setting surge in COVID-19 cases.
A lawyer for the Pacers Showgirls strip club, Jason Saccuzzo, said that the clubs would file a request with the appeals court to reconsider its block on Wohlfeil’s order. The clubs have until December 23 to file their arguments with the court, according to the order.
Photo By Office of the Governor of California / Wikimedia Commons
