When they shut us down,
we actually didn't go back to work for months.
The two weeks turned into another two weeks,
another two weeks.
March, we got shut down,
April, we were still closed, May, June.
It's just this sweeping mandates.
It's like it doesn't matter what you figured out,
it doesn't matter how distanced, how safe, how whatever,
just if you're a salon and barbershop, you're closed.
There are public health agencies in every state
that operate under the governor.
And so these public health agencies always had the ability
to take measures necessary to respond
to public health crisis.
The orders that have been issued by governors
around the country are quite definitely unprecedented
in our history.
In fact, there have been previous pandemics,
but this is the first time in our history,
that we have seen governors and executive branch agencies,
public health departments, react the way that they have.
When we're dealing with an emergency like this,
we have governors who are operating under emergency power.
And so, they and their staffs are making the day-to-day
decisions about how to balance the interests
of the citizens at large,
and the individuals who are impacted
and the businesses who are impacted.
The latest in the coronavirus
emergency hospital admissions in the US soaring past 65,000.
Governors in four states
have now ask residents not to go out
unless absolutely necessary. What needs to be done
to stop the surge in these cases
that we're seeing? This is not life as usual.
Universal and uniform wearing of masks,
avoiding crowded congregate situations,
keeping physical, sick.
You don't wanna have to be on a ventilator.
The United States Constitution does not
give the federal government public health emergency powers,
leaving the power in the hands of the states
to respond to public health emergencies.
California was the first to order its nearly
40 million residents to isolate
while many people were in favor of the lock downs.
There were also many who felt that certain mandates
went too far arbitrarily infringing on their rights.
One of these people was Jessie Santiago,
one of the two owners of salon Benders
a hair and beauty salon in long beach, California
July comes around and they give us this new order.
They're like no indoor hair can be done
but you can cut hair outside.
Hairdressers were like, what the heck?
Like how am I gonna do a haircut outside?
What am I gonna like wash someone's hair
with a watering hose?
Like what, how, like how are we gonna we do this?
We got our community together and people volunteered
and donated their time and supplies and finances
to build a beautiful outdoor garden salon
so that we could open again.
But you can, you know you can fly to Hawaii right now,
but I can't, yeah, I can't do this.
I do not believe that governors or the president
of the United States or any agency has unlimited
authority to act in a time of crisis.
There are statutes that are in place that also restrict
what these governors can do.
I believe that many of them have simply ignored
the statutory framework.
But we have what's called the separation of powers
and the governors and the executive branch are
to carry out the law, they're not to make the law.
The federal government has more limited powers
but it still has a lot of them.
And it is the entity that can coordinate everything
across the nation especially when we're talking
about a disease that doesn't know
anything about state borders.
Protecting against the spread of this deadly disease
is an absolutely compelling interest.
And until there's something like a vaccine, there aren't
that many other ways to prevent the spread of the disease
other than to impose the restrictions
Getting your hair cut is not a need. It's not.
And while that is true, having a job in a society
like this is a need, making money is a need.
And this is what we do.
Nearly a year into the crisis
with millions start of work and businesses
permanently closing left and right.
Even citizens who support extensive safety measures
are left wondering where do they fit into
the political decision-making process?
And who's advocating for them during these times
When you're dealing with a legislative process
and you can talk with your legislators
you have an opportunity to meet with your legislators
and you can explain to them why the steps
that they're taking to control this are too heavy handed.
Why there are other alternatives that are available
but when you have a governor sitting in a Capitol
not listening to anybody except a very narrow
subset of medical professionals, we're losing our republic
and our representative government.
I think what we're gonna see in the writings
and in the things that happen after this crisis
is going to be strong thinking.
And I hope action to coordinate what the federal
government does with what the states do.
The very structure of our government expects
that states will be doing things differently
because they have different population
and different circumstances, but that all
the state governors will be working
and trying to serve the public interests
because that's what they were elected to do.
But then COVID comes on the scene
and it creates such an emergency
in so many different arenas that another statute kicks in.
And that's the emergency services act in California,
which allows the governor to declare
a public health emergency.
And so the powers of government then centralized
in the governor.
There are limits that would stop a governor
from continuing to act in this way
when the emergency quells.
And one thing is that the statute itself says he has to
stop the emergency as soon as it's practical to do so.
Additionally, the California emergency services act
at least says that the emergency can be terminated
by the legislature. So they're to check
on this power that can seem absolute as well.
It is becoming arbitrary when they are just
simply imposing more and more and more restrictions
without assessing the reasons that their previous
restrictions may not have worked.
The burden of proof should be on the government to prove
that whatever restrictions they're going
to impose actually work.
They have flipped the burden of proof and placed it
on the business owners and said to folks like Jesse
you prove that if someone comes into your hair salon
they will not contract Corona virus.
The fear of our government is that the States have
the power to do this because they can do it different ways.
It's called being laboratories of experiment.
So California can shut down this, but not shut down that,
you know, Montana does a different thing.
New York does a different thing.
And so the States look at each other and say, gosh
which one of these things is working?
What should we do? And then they adjust.
And so when we're looking at the governments
we wanna see them being nimble and looking at evidence
and changing to react to it.
It feels like there is a big disconnect of
experience almost like they can make decisions
without recognizing how it's impacting, where
we're seeing on a very real and everyday basis
what's happening here.
How's that room feeling
Back to square one, California shuts
down most of its public life for the second time.
Back in March it was the first view state
to impose the strict stay at home order.
Beyond bars and restaurants, the governor has also
called for the closing of gym hair, salons, churches,
and non-essential workplaces in most counties.
I think that there's gonna be a tremendous
Exodus of beauty professionals.
We can't trust that you know, that the thing
that we've been doing our whole lives to make money
is solid anymore.
The secret to being a successful person in business
and in small businesses is we believe that you have
to adapt or die.
And this is a situation where we're not even allowed
to adapt, the adaptations that we have made
are not acceptable. So it's like adapt and die.
Once you learn that the virus is affecting a certain
segment of your population, you focus on that
certain segment of your population.
And basically the rest should be able to go
about businesses as normal. We needed to focus
on our seniors.
We needed to focus on protecting our nursing homes
and our assisted living facilities.
And instead what a lot of these governors did was focus
on everything and attempted to find a solution
that could be this big all the way around
and the most vulnerable were the ones that suffered
the most.
I don't want it all minimized, that pain
and hardship that businesses are experiencing
during COVID it's absolutely there and it's absolutely true,
but the courts will be hesitant to step in
and use the constitution to second guess what governors
are doing in this circumstance.
Any Supreme court justice will tell you this
the most conservative and the most liberal is
that this structure protects individual Liberty
but it recognizes that nobody has liberty.
If there aren't laws that provide all the things
that we're accustomed to.
And so the individual rights guarantees again
are on the outside and they say the few things
that government absolutely can't do.
But the reason that they're so few is because governments
need to do so many things.
And the Covid crisis is an example of that.
I want to keep this business alive.
So, you know, we're going to fight,
we're just gonna continue to fight.
In 2021 with the COVID-19
vaccine rollout underway some States have begun
to relax restrictions implemented
to slow the spread of COVID-19, but the debate on how
and when States should reopen continues,
as well as the debate about how appropriate these
restrictions were in the first place.