May 12, 2020—The Center for American Liberty, in coordination with the Dhillon Law Group and on behalf of the plaintiff the Professional Beauty Federation of California and others, filed a lawsuit in federal court today against Governor Newsom and others to #OpenSalonsNow.
Today’s lawsuit arises in response to Governor Newsom’s March 19, 2020 Executive Order N-33-20 ordering the shelter-in-place of all Californians—criminalizing working outside of the home for all “non-essential” jobs.
Many of California’s beauty professionals are small businesses that employ 1099 contractors and aren’t eligible for the Paycheck Protection Program. California’s beauty professionals are required to pass 1,600 hours of training, which has a heavy focus on sanitation, and spotting health issues early.
The PBFC is California’s only professional association representing every sector of the beauty industry, which has over 500,000 licensees and 50,000 salons in this state.
“Today the Professional Beauty Federation of California, in partnership with the Center for American Liberty, stood up for the half-million people in California’s beauty industry who had nobody in state government on their side,” said PBFC’s legal counsel, Fred Jones. “Every law-abiding job and business is essential to California’s economy. It’s time to put our well educated professionals back to work doing what they do best: lifting the image and spirit of our millions of trusting Californians in a safe, well-regulated and state-licensed beauty establishment.”
“A great thinker once quipped that ‘all evil needs is for good men (and women) to do nothing’. Well, the PBFC wondered ‘If not us, who?’ and decided we needed to act to save the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of desperate licensed professionals,” said PBFC’s president, Ted Nelson. “Today’s legal filing asserts our God-given, Constitutionally protected right to earn our happiness by the sweat of our brows, skills of our hands and compassion in our hearts.”
“Governor Newsom is denying over half a million licensed, highly trained professionals, many of which are immigrants, women, and minorities, their human right to earn a living, and is using the strong arm of the law to punish and grind them into submission,” said Chief Executive Officer of the Center for American Liberty, Harmeet K. Dhillon. “Governor Newsom’s unilateral edicts regarding the Covid-19 situation, which is a growing civil rights crisis, are increasingly irrational and even cruel. Untethered to any scientific basis, Governor Newsom since day one has picked winners and losers with no due process, standards, or even stated rationale. He is not above the law, and he does not have the right to issue these arbitrary decrees without ‘showing the receipts.’ There is no science or policy basis on which to deny food to the tables of these families, and we will not stop until California is open for business again.”
“My business, my fellow salon professionals, our families and our beloved clients can no longer afford to teeter on the edge of our seats waiting for the announcement of our salon opening directives,” said plaintiff and owner of Social Salon Suites in Glendale, Calif., Rosey Ibarra. “The extremely delayed reopening of our salons is a gross oversight of our professional licensing standards. We have all been formally trained extensively by the State of CA in sanitation and are ready for direction from our State and State Board. We must be allowed to open sooner than months from now.”
