A North Carolina court upholds fines against a bar and said non-profit status and membership criteria are needed for exemption from new state laws.
North Carolina’s Court of Appeals has upheld fines against a Greensboro, N.C. bar that continued to allow patrons to smoke, even after the state enacted a smoking ban that took effect in January 2010.
A three-judge panel ruled unanimously on July 19 that a billiards parlor/tavern owed the fines, ruling that the establishment didn’t meet the definition that allows smoking at nonprofit private clubs but not at for-profit ones, and failed to prove its contention that such a definition was unconstitutional.
The judges also said the bar didn’t provide any evidence of its own membership requirements that would prove it qualifies as a private club.
Lawyers for the establishment had argued that the state can’t allow smoking on one side of a street but not another, while attorneys for Guilford County, which had issued the fines, argued that state legislators had drawn a rational distinction in making the definitions between non-profit and for-profit establishments and for private clubs.
In an editorial after the decision was rendered, the Greensboro News-Record reported that the billiards parlor/tavern had attempted to get around the smoking ban by calling itself the Gate City Billiards Club, charging a $5 annual membership fee and then admitting “only members and their guests.”
Last year, a County District Court Judge ruled against the club’s owner’s contention that his business was being denied equal protection under the law and that there was no rational basis for making the distinction between nonprofit private clubs where smoking would be allowed to continue, and those where it would be banned.
In upholding that decision in a unanimous decision, the North Carolina Court of Appeals reiterated that the legislature’s purpose in enacting the ban was to protect health in public places, which is why it was reasonable to allow exceptions for private establishments, and to distinguish between public and private places by their for-profit or not-for-profit status.
The limited exemptions, one of the state Appeals Court judges wrote in issuing the opinion, may have been prompted by troubles the state’s ABC Commission has had with businesses that obtain permits as private clubs but “open themselves to the public.”
It’s rational to make sure an entity isn’t “merely cloaking itself as a membership organization as a subterfuge to avoid a certain law,” the judge added. The establishment in question, she observed, did not present “any evidence of its own membership selection criteria, membership fee requirements, guest-use policy or organizational formalities, involvement of the membership in its operation, or otherwise suggest that it would qualify as a private club.”
While concluding that Gate City Billiards should “turn on the no-smoking sign,” the editorial in the News-Record contended that “the law was too lenient in exempting some establishments where members and employees can be exposed to secondhand smoke. The remedy is to expand the law, not to allow more exceptions.”
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