North Carolina Supreme Court to Consider COVID-19 Bar Shutdown Cases

North Carolina’s Supreme Court has agreed to consider cases brought against Gov. Roy Cooper for forcing bars to shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic. Justices in recent days issued orders accepting Mr. Cooper’s appeals against lower court decisions that favored the North Carolina Bar and Tavern Association and bar owners. A unanimous panel of the Court of Appeals of North Carolina in April ruled that there was no evidence to support Mr. Cooper forcing some bars to close while letting others open. “Defendant’s ‘science and data’ tends to show that bars in general did present a heightened risk of COVID-19 transmission, as people normally gather, drink, and talk in bars of all sorts. We have considered the ‘science and data’ presented by [the] defendant to justify the distinction between closing some types of bars and not others, but this information does not support [the] defendant’s position, even if we consider all such information to be true,” Judge April Wood wrote in the unanimous opinion....