Philadelphia restaurant owner group sues city over ‘home security’ restrictions



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Restaurant workers are worried about where their next paycheck will come from after Philadelphia officials say they are banning indoor dining and restricting outdoor dining at least until the end of the day. ‘year.

As of Friday, restaurants in Philadelphia will no longer be allowed to offer indoor dining, and outdoor dining will be limited to groups of just four people from the same household.

Restaurant workers say their livelihoods are in question.

“We pick and choose the winners and the losers, and I’m afraid we’re all the losers,” said Stavros Vasiliavis of Bodega Bar and Kitchen.

Restoration restrictions are declining as COVID cases increase and Philadelphia is reporting 765 new cases.

“How come the restaurants in the city of Philadelphia are more dangerous than a city of Philadelphia Lowes, or Walmarts or Wawas?” lawyer Brian Fritz asked.

The lawyer for the group of 15 restaurateurs filed a lawsuit Thursday, arguing that the city’s “Safer at Home” restrictions violate their constitutional rights.

They say they have received no notice of the restrictions and that they are being implemented arbitrarily.

“The defendants, Kenney and the City of Philadelphia, as set out in the ‘safer at home’ ban on eating indoors, said the ability to control movement, interaction, livelihood and the Privacy of Residents of the City of Philadelphia to order that Citizens, such as the Applicant, not use private property, without providing citizens with prior notice or an opportunity to be heard, and without providing fair compensation to those who will be irreparably harmed by the ban on the mandate to eat indoors, ”we read in the trial.

Restaurant owners are calling for an emergency injection to prevent the city from enforcing the new restrictions.

Philadelphia Health Commissioner Dr Thomas Farley said contact tracing in the city has found restaurants to be places with the potential to spread COVID.

“There is a lot of evidence across the country that restaurants are high risk. CDC studies showing that people with COVID are more likely to have eaten at a restaurant than those who haven’t, ”said Dr. Thomas Farley.

Indoor restaurants will be closed for six weeks, just long enough for restaurant owners to say so for their careers to collapse.

“We need people to bail us out. People won’t survive the next six weeks without a paycheck, ”said Shannon Darcy.

The city responded to the lawsuit Thursday evening by saying, “We are still reviewing the lawsuit. But the ban on eating indoors is a critical part of our strategy to slow the spread of COVID-19 at a time when rates of Infection is increasing and hospitalization rates are dangerous. As Dr Farley noted today, these restrictions are temporary. Death is permanent. “

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