Gym Owners Organize to Sue Governor Cooper Over Continued Closure Edicts

RALEIGH – After Governor Roy Cooper’s benevolence failed to extend to gyms and health clubs in his announcement of Phase 2 reopening guidelines, business owners are now joining forces to sue the governor for denying their rights and destroying their businesses by decree.

Gyms, usually attended by health conscious, physically fit people interested improving their chances at long fulfilling and active lives, have nevertheless been a target of Cooper and the Closure Crew. Now, Cooper will the target of a lawsuit, having already been rebuked by a federal judge once for overstepping his authority and violating the constitution during this declared state of emergency.

As soon as the guidelines were released Wednesday, gym owners formed a Facebook group Reopen NC’s Health Clubs, with more than 160 gym owners and gaining thousands of members over night.

“We’re asking health club and fitness facility owners to join us in a legal battle to reopen our businesses here in NC. Please invite all your like-minded club owners to join our campaign. More details to follow”

These business owners, having been closed for two months, are faced with losing their business because of completely arbitrary restrictions that pick winners and losers, blessing winners with survival and dooming losers to ruin.

From North State Journal:

“We’re asking health club and fitness facility owners to join us in a legal battle to reopen our businesses here in NC. Please invite all your like-minded club owners to join our campaign. More details to follow,” the page description reads.

The Reopen NC’s Health Clubs page appears to currently be administered by multiple individuals including Jason Morgan, owner of MuscleWorx in Wilmington; Kinston area gym owner Edward Smith, Jr.; Garret Marek, a Managing Partner at Fit4Life in Charlotte and Todd Dini of Swansboro Health & Fitness, Inc. […]

In addition to organizing to sue the governor, those joining the page are working towards a single, unified opening day and time as an act of civil disobedience.

“We won’t stand for this closure to be dragged out at our expense, so let’s stand together on opening up our businesses,” group member Kristen Ost wrote alongside a poll for staging a unified reopening.

Also in the executive order, a provision was carved out to allow collegiate and professional athletes to train in indoor fitness facilities that would otherwise remain closed, provided that they do not exceed the indoor mass gatherings limits.

A Change.org petition to lobby Cooper to allow gyms to open has also been started with nearly 2,000 signatures since it went up 14 hours ago. […]”

Phase 2 1.5 is set to endure for five weeks. The level of adherence to the restrictions among the general public is already peeling away and accelerating. The business-owners still targeted by Cooper for closure will be suffering a massive, unequal, and destructive mistreatment under the law, and will be left little choice but to reopen or lose it all.

Read more about the budding legal effort, against Governor Cooper’s orders, being organized among gym owners here. Follow the group’s Facebook page here.