WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) – A restaurant owner who refuses to require patrons to furnish their medical papers has been targeted by the health department and the Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration of the nation’s capital, but he won’t back down.
For his stance, Eric Flannery has won support from well-known libertarian Republican politicians, Senator Rand Paul and Representative Thomas Massie, both from Kentucky. The pair, along with Reps. Tim Burchett (R-TN) and Victoria Spartz (R-IN), patronized Flannery’s restaurant, The Big Board, on Tuesday night in defiance of the city’s order to shut it down. The city initially yanked its liquor license before ordering it to close down altogether.
. @RepThomasMassie @RepTimBurchett, and @RepSpartz also showed up to support the just-shut-down Big Board joint. Rand Paul had pre planned showing up to support but had no idea the DC health dept was about to shut it down over vax/mask noncompliance pic.twitter.com/77YknC1Kce
— Emily Brooks (@emilybrooksnews) February 2, 2022
Flannery told The Daily Signal that he refuses to treat anyone – his staff or customers – differently because of their personal choices on vaccination.
An inspection report from the city’s Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration cites him for not enforcing mask mandates and for not checking people’s vaccination papers.
.@thebigboarddc’s Eric Flannery emotionally breaks down as he shares how DC punished him for defying the vaccine mandate. pic.twitter.com/R2hU9lh6pV
— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) February 2, 2022
“I decided this bar was going to be a place where everyone was welcome,” Flannery said, speaking of the bar’s reopening in May 2020. “No matter what happened, that’s what we were going to be.”
“My servers are not lesser people,” said Flannery. “They don’t need to be masked. They don’t carry disease.”
The Department of Health investigated him four times and another licensing agency visited him “eight or nine times” since Flannery said he would not enforce D.C.’s new vaccine passport system, which took effect in January 2022 just days before the March for Life and a protest against COVID mandates.
What a coincidence!
The only restaurant in the city openly defying the mayor's ultra vires COVID dictates was shut down for totally unrelated code violations!https://t.co/8BKaaaysM8 https://t.co/IQ5oRWvkLM pic.twitter.com/VHGKxz1QNK
— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) February 2, 2022
A GiveSendGo fundraiser for the restaruant has accumulated $11,000 and a GoFundMe organized by The Daily Caller’s Henry Rodgers has brought in $31,000.
Paul told The Daily Signal people should resist government lockdowns and mandates.
“The masks don’t work, particularly the cloth masks,” Paul said. “Natural immunity does work, so if I’m a bartender and I’ve had natural immunity, what’s the science behind me having a mask?”
From Big Board, Senator @RandPaul tells reporters: “None of the things they have told us to do have effected the trajectory of the disease at all.” pic.twitter.com/efhAmnxVHR
— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) February 2, 2022
“The Big Board is far from the only D.C. establishment to decline to follow the city’s masking and vaccination requirements, but it is the first to do so vocally,” wrote Robby Soave at Reason. “Flannery made his stance clear on Twitter, and reiterated it during a recent Fox News appearance, which provoked the government’s ire.”
He continued:
D.C.’s Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration has issued 50 verbal warnings to various restaurants whose staff failed to mask up at all times. Customers, of course, don’t wear masks while they’re eating and drinking. Intentionally or not, such requirements are creating a second class of serving staff who must follow stricter rules than other people, even though there is no scientific support for the idea that one group is more prone to disease than any other.
Meanwhile servers are not subject to the indoor vaccine mandate.
Paul called for D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser to be impeached.
The city’s vax-to-eat requirement for restaurants means a number of members of Congress cannot dine or enjoy indoor entertainment or other activities in the nation’s capital, and neither can many of their constituents if they come to visit or lobby their representatives. The mandate also disproportionately affects minority residents, many of whom live in poverty, as they are less likely than their white counterparts to be “fully vaccinated” with the novel mRNA shots.