The owner of a Minnesota bar that is being sued by the state for defying the shutdown order told Fox & Friends on Monday that she decided to open because her business couldn’t survive another lockdown.
Lisa Monet Zarza, the co-owner of Alibi Drinkery, said on Fox News that she made the decision to re-open Dec. 16 after being shut down for nearly a month. Zarza said that she was caught off guard by the amount of support she has received from the community, as well as the amount of pushback from the state. (RELATED: Restaurants Win Lawsuit Challenging Cuomo’s Coronavirus Restrictions, Are Allowed To Reopen)
“We were served with a temporary injunction restraining order, a lawsuit from the state, and a contempt of court order from the judge in our county,” Zarza told Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt. She said that the Minnesota Department of Health is either attempting to take their liquor license or already has, but they have not seen the paperwork.
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“We read about it,” Zarza said. “And don’t even know what’s going on.”
“We also have a hearing in February regarding our liquor license,” she added.
The lawsuit against Zarza was filed Jan. 22 by the Minnesota Department of Health.
“We opened right before Christmas. Our staff needed money,” Zarza said when asked why she decided to open. “Unemployment was not doing it for any of our staff members.”
“We also did it for the fact that we weren’t going to be able to get through another three-month shutdown, which is the first shutdown, was two and a half months,” she added. “We also did it because it’s our right as a business owner to open. And it was an unconstitutional executive order by our governor that singled restaurant industries out and shut us down with little to no data showing had that we were the super spreaders that they were claiming.”
Zarza said that despite all of the support from the community, she received death threats and was the target of vandalism.
“We had thousands and thousands of people reaching out to us from all over the country and all over the world in support,” she said. “And we have thousands of people reaching out and telling us to kill ourselves. Telling us we should die, our families should die. Our employees should die.”
“We got vandalized,” Zarza continued. “Our entire building got vandalized. We were followed. It was insane.”