A group representing half a million workers in California's beauty and hair industries is suing Governor Gavin Newsom and demanding the immediate reopening of salons and barbershops statewide.
Nail and hair salons have been shuttered since mid-March, when the state first imposed shelter-in-place requirements amid the growing pandemic.
On Tuesday, Gov. Newsom announced slightly relaxed rules allowing several industries to reopen statewide with restrictions. But salons and barbershops were not among them.
"The whole classification of 'essential' versus 'nonessential' [businesses] is arbitrary. It was done without a due process. It was done without any appeal or opportunity to be heard," said Harmeet Dhillon, the San Francisco-based attorney filing the lawsuit on behalf of the Professional Beauty Federation of California.
Dhillon is a Republican Party official whose firm has filed or threatened to file more than a half-dozen lawsuits against the Newsom administration over its shelter-in-place orders.
Newsom and other public health official say that reopening high-contact businesses too quickly risks sparking a second wave of COVID-19 infections.
— Shannon Lin