Eric Flannery is a Navy veteran and co-owner of the Big Board, a restaurant and bar in Washington, D.C., on H Street. The Big Board had thrived for a decade. But Flannery says that when D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser passed emergency mandates that required his staff to check personal medical records and employees to remain masked at all times, he did some soul-searching and refused to comply. “We’re not agents of the government, and my servers are not second-class citizens that need to be masked,” he said at a Heritage Foundation event.
The fallout was devastating. The restaurant was closed, and its license remains suspended. While Flannery is hopeful the Big Board will one day reopen, he doesn’t regret resisting what he called the “immoral” mandates. “We aren’t going to participate in any state-sponsored discrimination of any kind,” he said.
