KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — A West Knoxville bar that repeatedly ignored orders to shut down at 10 p.m. to control the spread of COVID-19 will reopen after losing its beer license.
Officials with Billiards & Brews announced that a judge signed an injunction giving the business its beer license back on Monday. Specific information about who signed the injunction was not immediately available, or their reasoning for doing so.
Billiards & Brews also said that their liquor license was still pending and that they hoped to have it back soon.
The bar's beer license was revoked after a hearing in February after it was cited 18 times for refusing to follow a 10 p.m. closure order from the Knox County Board of Health. The order was meant to control the spread of COVID-19, which had caused the death of 609 residents as of Wednesday.
"Billiards & Brews is by far the single most flagrant violator of the Board of Health's pandemic safety measures," said Knoxville Mayor Indya Kincannon in a statement about the February hearing. "Testimony from the Knoxville Police Department, in fact, showed that the bar's 18 citations over three months set a record for the most in recent memory.
"The bar owner and managers repeatedly made conscious decisions to violate the law, and those decisions -- during a health emergency that has killed more than 500 Knox County residents -- put our community unnecessarily in greater danger."
The owner of Billiards & Brews, Richard Lawhorn, told 10News in February that he took the board's regulation as a recommendation and not something that was legally enforceable.
Restrictions to prevent the spread of COVID-19 have since loosened since the bar was cited, leading to it losing its beer and liquor licenses. Businesses can now stay open until 1 a.m. and the county's social gathering limit has expired.