Some of history’s greatest and worst revolutions have come out of the bar. From founding father Samuel Adams’ little tea party in Boston in the 1700s to Hitler’s unsuccessful Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, the bar has in many instances become the place where the flouting of overzealous authority is born.
Bilbo's photograph by Benjamen Purvis
So when local bar-and-grill chain Bilbo’s became the first target of the Nevada Clean Indoor Air Act and was forced to remove ashtrays and matches emblazoned with the Bilbo’s logo from bar tops, due to an injunction by District Judge Valerie Adair June 8, the neighborhood chain took up the fight.
“The basic reason we’re going through with the suit is because the law is unconstitutional,” says Bilbo’s attorney Bob Peccole.
According to Peccole, the injunction violates the bar’s First Amendment rights that apply toward methods of advertisement. The ashtrays and matchbooks, both of which have been removed due to the injunction, served as means for the bar to advertise its brand name, and are the focus of the pending civil suit filed by the Health District. In response, Bilbo’s filed a countersuit claiming that the injunction and the nonsmoking law not only violate free speech provisions, but also the bar’s due-process and equal-protection rights.
“[The Clean Indoor Air Act] is a very poorly written law,” Peccole says. “If the courts apply the law as it is, it has to be stricken. It’s just a bad law for the public.”
And although Bilbo’s suit, and the pending Nevada Supreme Court case regarding the overall constitutionality of the Act, filed by the Nevada Tavern Owners Association, will be resolved in court, the fight, as it were, started in the bar. And will ultimately end there.