Which brings us to today’s reopening, as set forth by state officials. LA County cities Pasadena and Long Beach each have their own public health departments and thus do not need to follow LA County DPH guidance Pasadena, as a result, continued for more than a week to allow on-site outdoor dining after the county Board of Supervisors closed it on November 24. Since that vote on November 24, multiple restaurants and local municipalities under LA County DPH jurisdiction have openly flouted the on-site dining ban, either by turning outdoor tables into ‘parklets’ for sit-down dining, or by continuing to allow customers on patios despite racking up citations and criminal charges in the process. That case was overturned on appeal, and is now pending another court date next month. 28 restaurant owner in Downtown LA, sought to overturn the ban on the grounds of a lack of direct causal data tying outdoor dining to rising COVID-19 cases, and a judge initially sided with Geragos, saying county officials “ acted arbitrarily” in shutting down outdoor dining. Days later a lawsuit by Mark Geragos, lawyer and Engine Co. Outdoor dining last year Wonho Frank Leeįrom there, the Board of Supervisors - which ultimately supersedes the Department of Public Health, and can decide (or not) to follow their guidelines - held a contentious vote to determine whether or or not to continue with the outdoor dining ban, voting 3-2 on November 24 to keep the ban in place. It only took a week for that to happen, which triggered the immediate stoppage of outdoor dining while sparking massive blowback from diners, owners, and workers about the timing of it all. At that time, the Board of Supervisors and the Department of Public Health tied the closure of outdoor dining to rising daily case numbers, saying that if the average jumped to 4,000 cases per day or more, outdoor dining would go away entirely. Various Southern California counties moved between the red and purple tiers for months, though LA County stayed in the purple tier the whole time - even moving to further reduce outdoor dining capacity to 50 percent in mid-November, before shutting it down entirely a week later. Details on those tier assignments and data metrics can be found here. In August, the state moved to the (just returned today) tiered system to determine reopenings for on-site dining. To backtrack: Since July 1, 2020, on-site dining at Los Angeles County restaurants has been confined to outdoor seating only, following a spike in COVID-19 cases at that time. So the question is: Will Los Angeles County immediately allow the return of on-site outdoor dining today? And can they, legally, given last year’s vote by County officials to stop on-site dining, and the ensuing lawsuit winding through the court system? So far, it doesn’t seem like anybody knows, though Eater has reached out the Board of Supervisors for clarification. Throughout the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, Los Angeles County officials (both the Department of Public Health and the County Board of Supervisors) have frequently acted to install more restrictive measures on its constituents and businesses that go above and beyond the state orders, including reducing restaurants to takeout and delivery only, weeks before Newsom demanded it. That is, unless county public health officials say otherwise. The modified public health order has taken immediate effect, so it may well be that outdoor breakfast is back at restaurants from Palm Springs to San Luis Obispo. The result of Newsom’s decision, which was formalized this morning, is that counties across the Southern California region are again defaulted to the “widespread,” or purple tier, the highest tier in the system, and can resume things like limited-capacity indoor services at hair salons, and outdoor restaurant dining. Gavin Newsom was planning today to cancel the state’s regional stay-at-home orders, meaning a return to the color-coded, multi-tiered, county-by-county lockdown orders seen throughout much of last summer and fall. Late last night, word began to leak out that California Gov.
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