A small business owner in Wisconsin was denied coronavirus relief funds from the local government after he participated in a rally protesting statewide stay-at-home measures to combat the pandemic.
Dimple and Denis Navratil have owned Dimple’s Fine Imports LLC in Racine, Wisconsin, for more than 20 years. They applied twice for some of the $900,000 the city allocated to small businesses to help offset the financial burden of the health crisis, according to an investigation conducted by the Journal Times and published Sunday.
Upon receiving his second denial, Denis Navratil was told by the city’s mayor that his attendance at a rally in Madison on April 24 protesting Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’s “Safer at Home” measures was used as a basis for his rejection.
“Participating in mass gatherings outside of our community, such as the rally that was held at the State Capitol — such large gatherings have been linked to cases of COVID-19 around the state — and then returning to our City, only served to put our residents at unnecessary risk and, thus, factored into the funding consideration,” Mayor Cory Mason told the paper.
Navratil said he feels he is being discriminated against for expressing dissatisfaction with his local government.
“I think I’m being denied my First Amendment rights here by the mayor; I think that’s terrible,” he said.
The paper reported that Navratil has been in contact with the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty about a possible legal remedy to the city’s action.
“We are greatly concerned that Racine officials are using government programs to discriminate and punish First Amendment protected speech,” the nonprofit organization said in a statement. “We will continue to investigate this matter.”
The Journal Times, using public records requests, reported 18 local businesses received grants up to $15,000 each, and in round two, 146 businesses received grants ranging from $2,500 to $6,500.
Dimple Navratil, Denis’s wife and a co-owner of the business, told the paper the city first said they had been denied because there was not enough funding for the program. The mayor later told the Navratils they were not in “compliance” with local ordinances needed to receive funding.
“I thought he was talking about my store,” Dimple Navratil said. “And I said I was closed until Gov. Evers said it was OK to open. Then he said, ‘No, it’s about being in the rally.’ Then I realized that he was talking about my husband going to the Madison protest that was on the 24th of April.”
Mason said the store owners have made themselves a risk to the public and should not be rewarded with grant funds.
“As Mayor, it is my duty to protect the public health of our City’s residents. While I certainly support the rights of free speech and assembly, I cannot in good conscious [sic] send scarce City resources to a person or business that willingly jeopardized public health, especially when they were competing with other businesses who were not flagrantly violating safety measures,” the mayor said.
“If an applicant was openly violating the statewide Safer at Home order and the public health emergency under which the City was operating to help mitigate the spread of coronavirus, that applicant would compete less favorably. When it comes to disbursing discretionary funds aimed at helping businesses who were sacrificing to protect public health, the City is not going to reward business owners who took reckless behaviors that risked the health of our community,” he added.
