The beauty industry joined restaurants in suing California Governor Newsom, requesting immediate and permanent reopening. The vast majority of the beauty industry is made up of women, first-generation immigrants and the LGBT community. Ten months after the Governor mandated salon closures, the state has failed to produce any “data and science” justifying the criminalization of the services of these state licensed professionals. In fact, the Professional Beauty Association just released its survey yesterday showing no correlation between the spread of COVID-19 and salons.
“Our small businesses, less financed and politically connected than multinational corporations, Hollywood and other so-called 'essential businesses’, have become the go-to sacrificial lambs to the Covid gods," said Professional Beauty Federation of California (PFBC) Counsel and Advocate Fred Jones. “This has been ruinous for thousands of our establishments and the livelihood of tens of thousands, without any justifiable basis."
Lead counsel and high-profile LA attorney Mark Geragos commented: “What has become obvious is that the Governor and so called health officials never followed ‘science or data’ on closing down outdoor dining or capricious lockdowns of safe barbershops and beauty salons. Instead of following the science they followed the Lobbyists and allowed film companies to utilize hairstylists and makeup artists, while preventing the same services to be done in salons by the very same trained professionals. By definition this is ‘unequal treatment under the law’.”
"Cutting hair is a criminal act in only one State in the Union,” reminded PBFC President Ted Nelson. “Governor Newsom is arbitrarily and needlessly destroying the livelihoods of state licensed professionals who have the formal education and training to keep their clientele safe from infections, as the CDC has acknowledged. Shame on him!"