Board of Aldermen 5-21-2020 Page 30
President Wilshire
Alderwoman Lu.
Alderwoman Lu
Thank you. Through you to Attorney Bolton if | could. Does a store owner have the right to ask someone to
leave their store?
President Wilshire
Attorney Bolton.
Attorney Bolton
Most often the answer is yes if the patron ... | didn’t hear that.
Alderwoman Lu
Sorry. If they had a sign indicating masks required, would they have a right to ask a person to leave?
Attorney Bolton
Yes, in my answer to the previous question, under ordinary circumstances the proprietor, manager, of
business property can refuse to serve anyone. There are certain bad reasons which you cannot exercise
that right but in the case of a refusal to wear a mask if it is required by law or required by the property
owner, by the business itself, yes they can say these are our regulations, if you come into my store or my
restaurant, we are going to require you to wear a mask when you are in close proximity to others or there is
any likelihood you'll be in close proximity to others. Or we require to wear a mask at all times. Yeah and
then the store owner at that point, if the person refuses to comply and refuses to leave, that becomes a
criminal trespass.
Alderwoman Lu
Thank you. So the way | see this is somebody walks into a shop without a mask, they are asked to leave,
they leave, they are asked to leave because there’s an Ordinance in town that requires masks, they don’t
leave, they become disorderly or a Police Officer is asked to help and it doesn’t even have to become a fine
for violating that Ordinance. The person has become disorderly.
Attorney Bolton
As | have said before, typically arrests in these kinds of situations result not from the original violation but
from the escalation of bad conduct. So the breach of the peace, the criminal trespass, the assaulting a
Police Officer, the assaulting of the store manager, the resisting arrest. Any of those things are not unlikely
to become packaged together.
Alderwoman Lu
Thank you, Attorney Bolton. | hope those things don’t begin to happen too often. But my thoughts are just
who goes out in this climate and thinks maybe they don’t have to wear a mask somewhere. | don’t think
many people would be surprised to find that in an Ordinance.
