Proprietors statewide eyeing Elko case; judge to rule within days on state's request for injunction
Jump to full article: Saint Paul (MN) Pioneer Press, 2008-05-07
Author: Jason Hoppin
Intro: The decision now rests in the hands of a Scott County judge following the first legal arguments over a theatrical exception to the Minnesota Clean Indoor Air Act. Invoking the exception, bars across the state have drawn national attention over creative "performances" that walk the line between stage production, civil disobedience and flouting the law.
District Judge Jerome Abrams seemed willing to entertain the idea that the performances -- where patrons from the suburbs to the Iron Range have bought buttons, dubbed themselves actors and lit up in bars -- fall within a hastily added exception to the statewide ban originally intended to apply to venues such as the Guthrie Theater.
"I'm very accepting of ... Shakespeare in the Park," Abrams said at one point. "I don't think you need a proscenium arch or a thrust stage to call it 'theater.' "
A lawyer for the Minnesota Department of Health, which brought the case, said allowing the shows to go on would create an exception that swallows up the rule. Last month, the state sued the rural Elko bar Bullseye Saloon
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