Gym sues city for damages, claiming order to close violated constitutional rights

Gyms across Mississippi will be able to officially re-open with some restrictions next week, but one business has filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Starkville, claiming its constitutional rights were violated when non-essential businesses were ordered to close at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Starkville Athletic Club — an exercise facility located on Eckford Drive off of Highway 12 — filed a 42-page complaint in U.S. District Court in Aberdeen with the city of Starkville listed as the lone defendant.

The business is represented by Tupelo attorney Jim Waide.

The complaint says Starkville Athletic Club is seeking to recover damages against the city for violating its Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment

rights after the city’s Board of Aldermen voted to close all non-essential businesses to combat the spread of COVID-19.

Joseph Underwood is the manager of the business and claims the city “aided and abetted the Governor of Mississippi to promulgate and enforce policies which deprived Plaintiffs of property without payment of just compensation.”

The complaint does cite the executive order issued by Gov. Tate Reeves on March 24 that provided definitions for essential businesses, which did not include gyms.

However, Waide writes in the complain that the governor and state are immune from suit for damages in federal court under the Eleventh Amendment, which grants the state sovereign immunity.

Another argument provided

in the complaint criticizes the city for implementing an ordinance to enforce guidelines by penalty of law, saying the city made the operation of Starkville Athletic Club a “crime,” even though the owner claims to have fully complied with social distancing and other guidelines set out by the federal government.

“The passage of the City ordinances, which incorporate State Executive Orders and which provide for a fine and imprisonment for Plaintiffs if they open their business, operates as a ‘taking’ of Plaintiffs’ property for public use without paying just compensation,” the complaint alleges.

Underwood and his legal counsel view the closing of his gym as an unreasonable seizure of his property and thus, a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

It goes on to say Starkville Athletic

Club suffered a permanent loss of property in the form of income in “the amount of that they would have earned had the city not caused the closing of it business.”

“Plaintiffs will suffer a future loss of income because the City’s action creates the false perception in the public that the gymnasium business is an unusually dangerous business, such that it is one of the few businesses which are closed for reasons of public safety,” the complaint says.

The taking of property, Waide claims, is where the city violated the businesses Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

The complaint then criticizes the city for forcing it to close, while allowing the Starkville Police Department and the Starkville Fire Department to