Gay bar wins $670K settlement with feds after owner’s testimony moved courtroom to tears

Court proceedings in a lawsuit filed by a Honolulu gay bar against the city’s liquor commission ended abruptly on Tuesday following emotional testimony by one of the co-owners, who described a pattern of homophobic abuse perpetrated by inspectors, including physical violence, stalking, and a death threat.

The sudden settlement awarded $670,000 to the owners of the bar, Scarlet Honolulu, and the local Gay Island Guide.

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Gay bar wins $670K settlement with feds after owner’s testimony moved courtroom to tears

The city’s liquor commission was accused of anti-gay discrimination. They settled shortly after the owner’s testimony.

The award followed years of harassment by inspectors with the Honolulu Liquor Commission inflicted on the owners, who filed the federal discrimination lawsuit in 2021.  

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“It’s just becoming very apparent that this organization is completely rotten from the top to the bottom,” Robbie Baldwin, the bar’s founder, told Hawaii News Now not long after the suit was filed.

Baldwin’s assessment was born out in testimony by Scarlet Honolulu’s co-owner, Joseph Luna, in seven hours of emotional testimony on the stand in the non-jury trial. Luna recounted his own story growing up being forced into the closet and years of anti-LGBTQ+ bigotry at the hands of the HLC, including being shoved by one homophobic inspector at the height of COVID restrictions.

“The entire courtroom was in tears and the judge was clearly paying attention to his story,” said plaintiff Walter Enriquez, the owner of Gay Island Guide.

“Fake and shallow” testimony from two Honolulu Liquor Commission administrators “basically confirms that this was a completely broken organization,” said Baldwin after the settlement.

The corruption ran deep, plaintiffs said. Baldwin’s longtime partner, Robert Sobieralski, who filed numerous public records requests related to the case, was issued a death threat with the words “Rob is dead” scrawled on a wall near the records repository, according to Civil Beat.

Scarlet co-owner Luna walked by the spot and saw the graffiti.

“Stricken with panic, I immediately reached out to Robert Baldwin, Rob Sobieralski, and the Honolulu Police Department for assistance,” he wrote in a declaration included in the motion.

A whistleblower in the case recounted investigators on patrol would slow down their cars in front of Sobieralski and Baldwin’s home.

“The repeated nature of these incidents and the context in which they were made led me to feel unsettled,” he wrote in a declaration submitted with the case.

Another bar owner, Steve Haumschild, founder of Lanikai Brewing Company, who wasn’t a party to the lawsuit, said the liquor commission “led with an iron fist.” After getting vocal about the commission’s questionable behavior, he was inspected nine times over three months.

“You can only be left to think that there’s some sort of underlying corruption or gross incompetence,” Haumschild said.

The federal complaint called the commission a “vastly corrupt entity.”

“What I want people to know is to not stop fighting for what’s right,” said Scarlet’s co-owner Baldwin after the settlement. “It’s hard, it’s stressful, but if you keep at it, you can really make change.”

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