The last time we checked in on jailed Texas hair salon owner Shelley Luther, she was cooling her heels behind bars. Both the state Attorney General and the Governor were calling for her immediate release, but it took the action of the state supreme court to set her free on Thursday night. She reopened her business again the following day, along with all of the other salon owners in Texas, because the government rules on business closures had been relaxed.
So now that it’s over and she’s back to work, has her experience behind bars left her with any lasting lessons? Does she have any regrets? Not in the least. When asked by reporters, Luther said that if she had to, she’d do it all again. (CBS Dallas/Fort Worth)
Dallas salon owner Shelley Luther, who was briefly jailed for refusing to close her doors, said Friday morning she would do it again. “Absolutely, I would not change anything.”
Luther welcomed U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), who said he flew from Houston to Dallas because he said he couldn’t think of a better place to get his first haircut in three months than her Salon A’La Mode.
Earlier this week, Dallas County Judge Eric Moye sent Luther to jail after she ignored his for seven days after she refused to close her salon.
Luther is quoted as saying, “This isn’t about opening a salon. It isn’t about a haircut. This is about all of us coming together and saying we have rights.”
Whether you supported her actions or not, it’s hard to deny that Luther has become something of a lightning rod in the battle between businesses seeking to reopen and governments insisting on keeping them closed down. And now that she’s out of the slammer, she’s got plenty to say and seems to be taking advantage of her fifteen minutes of fame to speak out.
While there’s never any truly “good news” associated with this pandemic, Shelley Luther is arguably benefitting from this series of events. Having Ted Cruz fly in for a haircut has clearly raised her profile even further and I’d imagine she’s doing a booming business at this point. Or at least as “booming” as you can when only being able to allow two or three customers into your shop at a time. And she didn’t really have to pay all that big of a price for it in the end. She was in jail for less than 48 hours, after all. And while I can’t speak from personal experience, I can’t imagine that her incarceration caused her all that much duress.
Also, the GoFundMe campaign started to help her out has now raised more than $500,000. She plans on using some of the money to pay off her legal fees and get caught up on the mortgage for her business. But she wants to spread some of the rest of the money around, potentially to other hairstylists who have been impacted by the shutdown orders. This includes two of them who were arrested in Laredo. Luther wants to help pay their attorney fees and possibly help them get caught up on their bills.
Those should be the last arrests of hairstylists (or any other business owners) we see. Governor Abbott has since modified his executive order to say that nobody violating the shutdown orders should be sent to jail.
So here’s an exit question for all of our VIP members. Is an executive order that prohibits violators from being put in jail an effective deterrent? I suppose they will all still be subject to fines or possibly even the loss of their business licenses, so perhaps so. But when one person flaunts the orders – even if it’s for what’s perceived as a noble cause – and the Governor immediately rides to their rescue and essentially bails them out, doesn’t it sort of undermine the message?
