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NY allows indoor dining again in hot spots following lawsuit, but not in NYC

January 14, 2021 Marina Villeneuve, Associated Press, and Raanan Geberer, Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Outdoor dining. Photo: Mary Frost, Brooklyn Eagle
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Restaurants in some COVID-19 hot spots in New York can once again offer limited indoor dining in the wake of the latest lawsuit against Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s virus restrictions, but at the same time, restaurants in Brooklyn and three other New York City boroughs are demanding, “What about us?”

Up to four people per table can now dine indoors in seven so-called “orange zones” located in counties with some of the state’s highest rates of COVID-19 cases or hospitalizations, including Monroe County in the Finger Lakes.

The decision came a day after some Erie County restaurants won a preliminary injunction for themselves against the state’s enforcement of the indoor dining ban in yellow zones.

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Andrew Rigie, executive director, and Robert Bookman, counsel, of the New York City Hospitality Alliance blasted the governor with a statement.

“The court’s preliminary decision and the Governor’s action to remove indoor dining restrictions in all “orange zones” makes the status of the indoor dining ban in New York City all the more outrageous and destructive to thousands of restaurants across the five boroughs, especially when our infection and hospitalization rates are lower than most counties in the State where indoor dining is permitted at 50 percent occupancy,” they said. 

In December, after Cuomo shut down indoor dining at restaurants after it had been available for only three months, a coalition of chief executives of the city’s five Chambers of Commerce, including Randy Peers of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, said, “This shutdown marks a completely different economic climate than restaurants faced at the onset of the pandemic, where many were in a better financial position and supported by federal stimulus funding. We now fear that thousands of small businesses will be forced to permanently close their doors and lay off employees.

Alfred Urban, owner of Schnitzel Haus in Bay Ridge, told the Eagle, “As far as indoor closures, of course it’s going to be devastating to the restaurant and bar industry. The only thing we can do is take-out. That’s going to interrupt 60 percent of our business again.”

Other restaurant owners expressed frustration that indoor dining was being suspended just as they had spent thousands to install plexiglass partitions and air-treatment machines, undergo deep cleaning and so on.

In the case of the upstate “orange zones,” State Supreme Court Justice Henry Nowak said he could not “find evidence that the state had a rational basis to designate portions of Erie County as an orange zone” and that the restaurants would suffer “irreparable harm” without the injunction.

It’s the latest lawsuit that has questioned Cuomo’s “micro-cluster” approach.

Cuomo proposed imposing COVID-19 restrictions based on addresses, rather than all across the state at once like last spring. Courts have long deferred to Cuomo’s emergency authority to respond to the pandemic, but restaurants and houses of worships have seen some success, arguing that Cuomo has gone too far.

The Supreme Court barred New York in late November from enforcing Cuomo’s 10- and 25-person attendance limits at churches and synagogues in hot spots in parts of Brooklyn and Queens. Cuomo’s office called that decision “irrelevant,” in part because the state ended up easing restrictions in those neighborhoods.

New York State now has no red zones and seven orange zones, even as nearly the entire state is seeing high enough positivity rates to qualify under Cuomo’s original red zone metrics. Cuomo in December said he would now shutter a part of the state only if hospitalization reaches critical levels even after hospitals boost extra beds and suspend some services.

Red zones shutter nonessential businesses and outdoor dining, while orange zones only allow outdoor dining or takeout and limit gyms and hair salons to 25 percent capacity. Cuomo originally shuttered schools for in-person instruction in red and orange zones, but later allowed them to reopen with testing.

The state now ranks 12th in the nation for its average of hospitalizations and new cases per-capita over the past seven days.

In central and northern New York, Herkimer and Lewis County have averaged a higher rate of new COVID-19 cases per-capita than the state of Arizona over the past seven days. Long Island’s Suffolk County, meanwhile, has a higher rate than California.


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