BENTON – Lawyer Tom Maag honors taverns as sources of ideas and revolution in a lockdown suit he filed for H’s Bar on Dutch Hollow Road near Belleville.
Maag sued state officials and county officials in U.S. district court on Oct. 30, seeking an order against Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s lockdown.
“This is America,” Maag wrote. “It is not North Korea.”
The suit claims that without an injunction, bar owner Matthew Hamann would have to go to bankruptcy court and sell the bar to creditors.
Maag wrote that the state selectively enforces the lockdown, shutting down Fast Eddie’s in Alton but not Texas Roadhouse in Glen Carbon.
“Some of America’s most venerated political and military events were orchestrated from taverns,” he wrote.
“The U.S. Marine Corps was created at Tun’s Tavern in 1775.
“The Tavern on the Square was a stop on the Underground Railroad.”
He wrote that the Stonewall riots at the start of the gay rights movement originated in bars in New York.
“Taverns and bars are where Americans for over 200 years have gone to plan protests, wars, and uprising, to plot, argue and discuss events of the day,” he wrote.
“They are for all practical purposes the real soapboxes of America and the successor to the Roman forum.
“Nobody goes to the public park, the sidewalk, or the courthouse to have friendly debates with their neighbors.
“They go to the tavern like they have for centuries and sometimes, just sometimes, they leave the tavern to effect real change.
He wrote that H’s Bar might join the long list of taverns, bars and pubs where historic events significance happened.
“J.B. Pritzker may well be the oil that greased that skid,” Maag wrote.
He wrote that nothing stopped legislators from crafting a law related to the virus.
“The legislature has never been consulted, at least not publicly,” he wrote.
He wrote that there’s no indication when Pritzker will stop issuing orders or when the orders will end.
He named state police superintendent Brendan Kelly, formerly St. Clair County state’s attorney, as a defendant, claiming that state police issued citations to several bars.
He named liquor commission chairwoman Cynthia Berg and gaming administrator Marcus Fruchter as defendants for threatening to revoke licenses.
He named the St. Clair County’s sheriff’s office and the county health department as lockdown enforcers.
He attached an affidavit of bar owner Hamann, stating his customers discussed the government’s handling of the virus as incompetent and unreasonable.
“Some of the words used to describe the government’s handling of the matter were quite coarse.
“If the bar is shut down, the customers of H’s Bar will not be able to assemble and have such discussions.”
The district court clerk assigned Judge Staci Yandle, who has set a hearing Nov. 13.