AUSTIN, Texas — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has intervened in the case of a Dallas salon owner whose jail sentence for violating a coronavirus closure order has become a cause celebre among some conservative Republicans.
“I find it outrageous and out of touch that during this national pandemic, a judge, in a county that actually released hardened criminals for fear of contracting COVID-19, would jail a mother for operating her hair salon in an attempt to put food on her family’s table,” Paxton said in a letter Wednesday to state District Judge Eric Moye.
Paxton’s office released the letter a day after Moye found salon operator Shelley Luther in contempt of court for continuing to operate her business. Moye sentenced Luther to a week in jail and fined her $7,000. Late Tuesday afternoon, Luther was booked into the Dallas County jail.
“The trial judge did not need to lock up Shelley Luther,” Paxton wrote. “His order is a shameful abuse of judicial discretion, which seems like another political stunt in Dallas. He should release Ms. Luther immediately.”
Moye did not respond to a request for comment emailed repeatedly to Bonnie Rivera, his court’s administrator.
On March 24, Luther reopened her business, Salon … la Mode, in violation of a public health stay-at-home order, and tore up a cease-and-desist letter from Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins at a demonstration the next day. Although Moye signed a temporary restraining order April 28 that told Luther to keep her business shuttered, she continued to operate it.
She said she hadn’t had any income since Jenkins’ March 22 stay-at-home order. She said she applied for a federal Paycheck Protection Program loan but it didn’t come through until Sunday.
“I couldn’t feed my family, and my stylists couldn’t feed their families,” Luther testified Tuesday. She declined Moye’s offer to consider levying only a fine if she would apologize and agree not to reopen her salon until she’s allowed to do so.
On Tuesday, Gov. Greg Abbott announced that barber shops and hair salons across Texas could reopen on Friday, provided that they follow certain hygiene and safe distancing recommendations.
Paxton seized on Luther’s testimony about needing to feed her family, and contrasted that with a recent push to limit coronavirus outbreaks in Texas county jails by freeing certain nonviolent offenders.
“As a mother, Ms. Luther wanted to feed her children,” Paxton wrote. “As a small business owner, she wanted to help her employees feed their children. Needless to say, these are laudable goals that warrant the exercise of enforcement discretion.”
In a letter to a county official last week, though, Paxton recommended strict observance of Abbott’s ban of reopened cosmetology establishments because of the risk of virus spread.
“Services provided by ‘bars, gyms, public swimming pools, interactive amusement venues … massage establishments, tattoo studios, piercing studios, or cosmetology salons’ are not defined as either essential or reopened services under” Abbott’s April 27 executive order that let stores, malls, restaurants and movie theaters reopen at 25% capacity as of Friday, Paxton wrote Brazoria County Judge Matt Sebesta.
“The nature of these services requires in-person contact between customers and service providers,” the Republican attorney general wrote Thursday. “Those customer-to-employee contacts are affirmatively precluded by (Abbott’s order), which instructs that ‘(p)eople shall avoid visiting’ those establishments for such business purposes.”
Montgomery County Judge Mark Keough, a Republican, said in a Facebook video Friday that the night before, Paxton’s office vowed to prosecute Texans who visit such nonessential businesses, which Abbott left out of his initial reopening order.
“We received a telephone call from the attorney general’s office who basically told us, followed by a letter, that anybody who visits these businesses … they could be prosecuted,” Keough said of massage parlors, gyms, hair care establishments, video arcades, bowling alleys and tattoo or piercing shops. “And the fact of the matter is that implies that those businesses are closed.”
Also Wednesday, as Abbott has done, Paxton criticized Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot for saying a year ago he wanted to limit his office’s prosecution of people for small-dollar thefts.
“If Dallas County is prepared to completely forgo prosecution of actual thefts, it cannot confine a woman to jail because she operated her business,” Paxton wrote.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said Luther’s fine is unacceptable and she shouldn’t be going to jail. If she doesn’t have the money, Patrick said he would pay the $7,000 fine, or serve out her sentence under house arrest.
“We want people to follow executive orders, but she said, ‘Hey, I am going to feed my kids’ and we understand that,” Patrick told reporters in a call in which he explained his task force’s recommendations on reopening after the coronavirus outbreak.
“I think the judge way overreached,” Patrick said. “If he wants to substitute me for her, and sentence me to seven days of house arrest, so she can go back to work, that’s fine. I am fine to take her place.”
———
(Austin correspondent Allie Morris contributed to this report.)
———
©2020 The Dallas Morning News
Visit The Dallas Morning News at www.dallasnews.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.