Strip club fights to stay open amid city’s nonessential business closures – By Samara Lynn (ABC News) / May 2 2020
“We have sexually explicit entertainment … but the business is a restaurant.”
A federal judge granted a strip club a temporary restraining order against the city of Houston and several city agencies allowing it to remain open as a restaurant, according to court documents.
Judge Vanessa D. Gilmore, who presides over the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division, issued the order on Friday.
The club, Onyx Houston, opened its doors early Friday when the state’s mandated closures to prevent the spread of coronavirus, ended at midnight.
Within an hour of opening, “dozens of Houston Police Department Officers and Fire Department officials raided the business,” the club alleges in the court document.
The city agencies threatened to shut the club down as a “nonessential” business, but “lacking a legal basis to do so,” according to the court docket, allowed the club to remain open. However, instead of leaving, police and fire officials, “loitered in the parking lot of Onyx from the hours of approximately 12:40 AM until 4:00 AM,” the club alleged in the docket. It then filed a restraining order to remain open.
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