Attorney Les Shively who recently made the short list as a candidate for the Indiana Supreme Court has filed a lawsuit against the City of Evansville and the Evansville City Council seeking exemptions to the recently passed smoking ban for a roster of his clients including two local VFW posts, American Legion Post 265, Owls Nest No. 30, the River City Eagles, the Riverbend Association, and the German Maennechor.
In a similar action in Louisville, Kentucky a group of clubs brought a lawsuit against the City of Louisville for exempting Churchill Downs on the grounds of unconstitutionality and prevailed. The outcome was not what Mr. Shively is seeking though, the outcome in Louisville was a judicial determination that the exemption for Churchill Downs was struck down resulting in a comprehensive smoking ban.
In a separate action Attorney Charlie Berger has filed a similar suit representing “bar owners”
It shall be iteresting to watch this proceed as such a determination may also strike down the recently passed statewide smoking ban in the State of Indiana. Is it true that this action was predicted by the CCO back on Feruary 14th.
They are both going to win as this violates equal protection and the old ordinance will be null and void; the state law just passed will likely be the governing rule of law unless the city can pass something before the state law is signed by Mitch
cdad,
I hope you are right (both win), but my guess is that the private clubs will win and the bars will lose, and the last one will turn on ‘public safety’ and the fact that the IN statewide law allows a City to pass a stricter ordinance. Private clubs seems like a slam dunk, and was extreme overreaching by City Council.
Also, what if one or the other Judges in these cases decides to use “the Louisville remedy”, which would mean that Casino Aztar loses its exemption. We’ll then get a chance to see if the Casino was bluffing about its gloom & doom scenario.
Good. I am glad someone is standing up to these power hungry a**h***s that run our city. The real question your should be asking, HOW MUCH DID AZTAR PAY?!! That is the only thing I want to know. They set up a smoking ban and exempted probably the newest bar in the city? As for Aztar, the thought of even stepping foot on that filth to give them money…let them eat cigs.
The exemptions are “special legislation” which is forbidden by Indiana’s Constitution.
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Can you provide a list of the bars that are suing the city over the ordinance? I am looking forward to going out after April 1, but if they don’t want my business I certainly don’t want them to have it.
Regulating the activities of private property owners on the basis of public health or any other reason is a mistake in logic, not to mention antithetical to the American way.
It is very very simple… If a patron does not want to go into a smoky bar, he does not have to do so. Just the same as a Christian who doesn’t want to go into a bar because they serve alcohol doesn’t have to go inside, or a strip club, or any other place he or she finds personally offensive for whatever reason. He does not, however, have the right to ban the owner of an establishment to do what he likes on his property, so long as he is not violating someone else’s rights in the process. As long as the owners are not forcing any activity upon anyone they do not wish to partake in, they should be allowed to do whatever they wish on their property.
To reject this principle is to reject everything America is about. This is the essence of libertarianism. Too bad not even most “conservatives” seem to get it.
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