An Alaska Superior Court judge has ruled that a state law limiting live shows at breweries, distilleries and wineries in Alaska is an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment and the Alaska Constitution’s protections for free speech.
Judge Adolf Zeman issued his decision Jan. 14 in a two-year-old lawsuit filed by three alcohol manufacturers against the state’s alcohol regulator.
“The speech restrictions fail the tests of strict and intermediate scrutiny, and such suppression of speech by the state cannot stand,” Zeman wrote at the conclusion of his 25-page order.
Until 2022, alcohol manufacturers were prohibited from having entertainment — including TVs, dancing, games and live music — on site. That year, as part of a sweeping modernization of the state’s alcohol laws, breweries, distilleries and wineries were allowed up to four live events per year if approved by the Alaska Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office, the state regulator.
Bars continued to be allowed an unlimited number of live events without permit; the difference in limits was billed as a political compromise necessary for the reform to pass the Legislature and become law.
Three companies — Zip Kombucha, Sweetgale Meadworks and Cider House, and Grace Ridge Brewing Company — filed suit to overturn the four-event limit, raising free-speech and equal-protection claims.
They were represented in court by a national group, the Pacific Legal Foundation. While the plaintiffs eventually dropped the equal-protection argument, the free-speech debate continued through written arguments.
Zeman ultimately concluded that the state failed to show how restricting live entertainment at breweries and distilleries, but not bars, would protect public health or safety.
“This court recognized that the challenged speech restrictions were once a critical piece of a grand compromise … however, political compromise is not recognized as a substantial government interest for the purposes of restricting speech under the First Amendment. Neither is the codification of preference for one industry actor over another,” he wrote.
While Zeman overturned a law limiting live entertainment, he upheld a law forbidding breweries, distilleries and wineries from having pool tables, dartboards and similar games, “because they are not speech.”
He also gave nodding approval to a law that restricts brewery, distillery and winery operating hours and serving sizes to less than what’s allowed for bars.
“The Legislature has and can further address public health and safety risks associated with alcohol consumption in breweries and wineries by limiting the amount of product that can be served, the hours during which they can operate, or by reducing the cap for the number of brewery or winery licenses allowed in a given community,” he wrote.
An appeal to the Alaska Supreme Court is possible by either side. Representatives of the Alaska Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office and the Alaska Department of Law said those agencies were still analyzing the decision.
Donna Matias, an attorney with Pacific Legal Foundation who represented the plaintiffs, said she is “really pleased” with the decision and said Alaska limits on live events are “actually very unusual” on a national level.
“It was a political compromise, but the legislature really never had the breweries’ First Amendment rights to use as political bargaining chips,” she said, “and I think the court in this opinion recognizes that very explicitly.”
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