Napa Valley
I have never been a fan of the legal, procedural-type television show, instead preferring sitcoms and dramadies. Part of my disinterest comes from the slicked back hair and power suits, and in part because many of these fictionalized accounts feel like instigators, which encourage the every-man and woman to take legal action when things don’t go in a desired direction. Yet in COVID times it’s been hard to deny the power of a pointed lawsuit, especially in Napa County when it comes to restaurant and winery bans. The first came last May when Camus Vineyards filed a discrimination suit against Gov. Newsom, as well as then state public health officer Sonia Angell of the California Department of Public Health. Poof—five days later, Newsom relented and tasting rooms were permitted to pour, outdoors.
More recently, restaurants and winery owners turned to legal means to force re-openings, forming The Wine Country Coalition for Safe Reopening. The group, also known as the Coalition, filed a lawsuit on Jan. 19 against Gov. Newsom and the current state public health officer, Tómas Aragón, which alleged that the state’s ban on outdoor dining and wine tasting infringed on equal protection, due process, and takings clauses of the California Constitution. The Coalition represents more than 50 restaurants, wineries, tasting rooms, and suppliers across Napa and Sonoma counties and other Bay Area regions.
Cynthia Ariosta, proprietor of Pizzera Tra Vigne in St. Helena and spokesperson of the Coalition, said this in a release, “Our members have collectively invested millions of dollars to reconfigure their spaces, buy safety equipment, and train staff and customers about new dining protocols, often going above and beyond the state and local guidelines. The Governor must trust the science behind outdoor dining and give our local restaurants and wineries a chance to survive this.”
The Coalition’s mission is to combat misinformation around outdoor dining and to protect its members, employees and patrons. One of the many rubs was the financial outlay restaurants forked over to initially sanitize and reconfigure dining rooms and then to equip outdoors spaces with costly tenting and heat lamps, only to have all those efforts be for not, when restaurants and wineries were forced to close, once again, in December.
Six days after the suit was filed, the regional stay at home order was lifted and wineries and restaurants were permitted to reopen, in a limited, outdoor capacity. I don’t like to be a bandwagoner, but this was one lawsuit I stood behind, for the livelihood of businesses in my community. The day of the announcement, I booked a reservation at one of my favorite restaurants, Sam’s Social Club in Calistoga, where I dined under a beautiful A-frame tent dotted with twinkle lights. The once-isolated downtown was replaced with budding signs of life, as people dined and basked in semi-normalcy.
Three days after the suit was filed, it was dropped, but with a warning from spokesperson Carl Dene of Sam’s General Store, who said in a press release, “We were gratified that the Governor ended this needless ban on outdoor dining and wine tasting, but we will be ready to refile our lawsuit if the ban is imposed again.”
Demand for action
In early February, another litigious earthquake shook the Bay Area, when the city of San Francisco sued its own school district to get children back into public school classrooms. The lawsuit, one of the first of its kind in the state, was a bold yet not unwarranted move.
City Attorney Dennis Herrera, with the support of Mayor London Breed, threw the Hail Mary to salvage what’s left of the dismal 2020-21 school year. In a news conference he said, “Not a single San Francisco public school student has set foot in their classroom in 327 days. More than 54,000 San Francisco schoolchildren are suffering. They are being turned into Zoom-bies by online school.” I love a good catchphrase, and “Zoom-bies” is one of the best (and most accurate) I’ve heard, based on what my 7-year-olds look like after a day of Zoom school.
In the same conference, Breed cited data about the pandemic’s toll on Black, Latino, Asian and low-income students who have lost significant academic ground, more so than white and wealthier students. Similar to the Coalition, parents united to form Open Schools California, an advocacy group of parents across 75 school districts, who are committed to public education and the belief that all children should have access to safe, in-person instruction.
As a working parent who was forced to take on the role of teacher for the better part of a year, many jigs were danced when my children returned to five days of in-person instruction in January. The St. Helena Unified School District has taken extreme measures to ensure the safety of students and teachers. From spotted spaces spread 6 feet apart throughout the campus, to stringent hand sanitizing, classroom disinfecting, teacher testing, staggered drop off and pick-up windows, masking protocols and more, enabling parents and students to get back to business.
There has not been a single day that I have regretted the decision to send them back to school.
While I don’t subscribe to my Dad’s favored catchphrase: “when in doubt sue them out,” I do support actions taken to ensure that Napa County businesses survive and children thrive.
