The governmental orders by layer
The orders that reached this industry came from every layer of government at once: the President, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Transportation Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security; the governors, health officers, health departments and licensing boards of every State and the District of Columbia; the mayors, county judges, county executives, boards of health and health officers of every large metropolitan area; and the courts. This section inventories them by layer. The quarters section applies them by quarter; the function-by-function section by function.
The universe
By May 31, 2020, forty-two States and territories had issued mandatory stay-at-home orders covering 2,355 of the nation's 3,233 counties.25 The Department of Health and Human Services' policy database records 4,218 State and territorial policy entries for the period, with a distinct policy type for personal care.26 By June 29, 2020 the governors alone had issued 2,065 executive orders.27 Thirty-nine States and the District of Columbia required face coverings at some point in 2020-21, as one of the workplace infection-prevention and exposure-control requirements they imposed on every indoor premises open to the public.28 On July 2, 2021, thirty-five States were under a COVID-19 emergency declaration and nine kept a statewide face-covering requirement; on September 21, 2021, twenty-five States were under emergency and eleven had a face-covering requirement in force, two more than in July.29 Nonfarm payroll employment fell by 20.5 million in April 2020 and the unemployment rate reached 14.7 percent; real gross domestic product fell at an annualized rate of 32.9 percent in the second quarter of 2020 by the advance estimate; and in July 2021 the Bureau of Labor Statistics still counted millions of persons who reported that they were unable to work because their employer closed or lost business due to the pandemic.30 The Government Accountability Office's own June 2020 account of the federal response records that the pandemic had "resulted in catastrophic loss of life and substantial damage to the global economy."31 The Federal Reserve's Beige Book of April 15, 2020 recorded that "[e]conomic activity contracted sharply and abruptly across all regions"; its Book of September 8, 2021, inside the third quarter of 2021, recorded that growth had "downshifted slightly" and that "dining out, travel, and tourism" had decelerated in the weeks in which the indoor face-covering orders listed in the third quarter of 2021 below took effect, while its Monetary Policy Report of July 2021 devoted a box to "Supply Chain Bottlenecks."32 The Library indexed, as of its compilation of September 28, 2026, 11,539 records with 10,716 exhibit files present, from the federal government, the fifty States, the District of Columbia, the territories, forty metropolitan areas and the sector and agency files, each graded by how it was retrieved; that figure is the count of the instruments The COVID Project has retrieved and indexed, not a count of the orders that reached any employer, and this page cites the Library's exhibits by identifier and states of each instrument what it is and what it did.33
The federal layer
The second quarter of 2020
The President declared a national emergency on March 13, 2020, and the Secretary of Health and Human Services' public health emergency determination of January 31, 2020 was renewed on April 21, 2020 and every ninety days thereafter through the period.34 The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency published its Guidance on the Essential Critical Infrastructure Workforce on March 19, 2020 and Version 3.0 on April 17, 2020, naming "[w]orkers in laundromats, laundry services, and dry cleaners," mortuary workers and household-repair workers and omitting salons and grooming; the States that adopted the list by order made those omissions closures.35 The Families First Coronavirus Response Act's paid-leave mandates took effect April 1, 2020 for every employer of fewer than five hundred employees, which is every employer in this industry, and ran to December 31, 2020 under the Department of Labor's temporary rules.36 Executive Orders 13909, 13910 and 13911 invoked the Defense Production Act for health and medical resources; the Secretary's Notice of March 25, 2020 designated N95 respirators, surgical masks, gloves, gowns and disinfectants as scarce materials subject to hoarding-prevention measures; and FEMA's temporary final rule of April 7, 2020 allocated those materials, which every salon, laundry and funeral home was ordered by its State to supply to its staff.37 The Office of Management and Budget moved the federal workforce to maximum telework on March 17, 2020.38
The third and fourth quarters of 2020
The public health emergency was renewed July 23 and October 2, 2020; the leave mandate ran to December 31; the PPE allocation rule was extended August 10 and December 31, 2020 to June 30, 2021; and the CARES Act's foreclosure moratorium and forbearance provisions governed the industry's landlords.39
The first and second quarters of 2021
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's conveyance order took effect at 11:59 p.m. on February 1, 2021: "Persons must wear masks over the mouth and nose when traveling on conveyances into and within the United States," and operators "must require that individuals wear a mask," enforced by the Transportation Security Administration's Security Directive 1582/84-21-01 from the same hour.40 The pre-departure testing order (issued January 25, effective January 26, 2021) governed every arriving air passenger; Proclamations 10143 and 10199 suspended the entry of non-citizens present in the Schengen Area, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Brazil, South Africa and India; and the Department of Homeland Security's monthly notices confined land-border crossings from Canada and Mexico to essential travel.41 Executive Order 13991 required masks and distancing in every federal building and on federal lands from January 20, 2021, and OMB Memorandum M-21-15 capped federal building occupancy at twenty-five percent until M-21-25 lifted the cap on June 10, 2021.42 OSHA's National Emphasis Program on COVID-19 took effect March 12, 2021; the OSHA Healthcare Emergency Temporary Standard took effect June 21, 2021, with compliance dates of July 6 and July 21, and reached "healthcare laundry services" performed in healthcare settings; the American Rescue Plan Act re-enacted the Suspension Clause on March 11, 2021; and the CDC's eviction moratorium was extended through July 31, 2021.43
The third quarter of 2021
The conveyance order and Security Directive 1582/84-21-01A (to September 13, 2021) and -01B (September 14, 2021 to January 18, 2022) were in force on every day of the quarter; OSHA's revised National Emphasis Program DIR 2021-03 took effect July 7, 2021, "effective for no more than 12 months"; the Healthcare Emergency Temporary Standard ran throughout; the public health emergency was renewed effective July 20, 2021; the entry proclamations ran until Proclamation 10294 revoked them effective November 8, 2021; the land-border notices of June 23, July 22, August 23 and September 22, 2021 ran month to month; the Title 42 order was reissued August 2, 2021; the CDC's second eviction order ran from August 3 to August 26, 2021 and the FHFA's REO eviction moratorium to September 30, 2021; the Safer Federal Workforce Task Force's revised Agency Model Safety Principles of July 29, 2021 reinstated face coverings and imposed attestation-or-testing on every onsite federal contractor; CISA published Version 4.1 of the essential-workforce list on August 10, 2021; the President's memorandum of August 17, 2021 continued one hundred percent federal cost share for the emergency; Executive Orders 14042 and 14043 of September 9, 2021 required vaccination of federal contractors' and employees' workforces, with the OMB determination of September 24, 2021; and the scarce-materials designation ran to November 15, 2021.44 The federal layer alone answers the sentence that no orders were in effect in the quarter.
The fifty States
The pattern
Personal-care premises were closed by name, not by inference, in forty-six States and the District of Columbia between March 16 and April 3, 2020; in the other four (Missouri, Nebraska, Utah and South Dakota) they were closed by county and city health orders in the largest markets before Nebraska's statewide Directed Health Measure of April 10, 2020 and were never closed statewide in South Dakota. They reopened between April 24 and July 6, 2020 only under orders that rewrote how the service was performed: appointment-only, one customer per operator, six feet or barriers between stations, waiting areas closed, masks on operator and customer, mask-off services barred or limited, and occupancy of twenty-five to fifty percent. The largest State closed them indoors a second time on July 13, 2020 and a third time from December 6, 2020 to January 25, 2021; New Mexico closed them again from November 16 to 30, 2020; New York's microcluster zones closed them from October 2020 into 2021; Illinois, Washington, Colorado, Massachusetts and Michigan re-capped or re-conditioned them in November and December 2020. In the States that reopened without continuing capacity or appointment conditions on the premises, those conditions lapsed in 2020 (South Dakota April 8; Alaska May 22; Kansas May 26; Oklahoma June 1; South Carolina June 11; Idaho June 13; Florida September 25), leaving the general face-covering orders (airborne-transmission controls that every business was required to enforce on its premises), the emergencies, the employer duties and the sector regulators as the State layer into 2021 (Kansas's face-covering order to March 31, 2021; Idaho's employer duties to February 1, 2021; Oklahoma's winter restrictions to March 12, 2021); in the States that carried capacity, appointment, mask-off-service or general face-covering conditions on the premises into 2021, those conditions fell between January 18, 2021 (North Dakota) and July 1, 2021 (New Mexico), with the largest States' between March 10 (Texas) and June 30 (Washington and Oregon), and twenty-two jurisdictions still carried them on April 1, 2021; the statewide face-covering orders fell between January 18 and July 6, 2021 in every State but Hawaii, whose order never lifted; and in the third quarter of 2021 six States and the District reinstated indoor face-covering orders and Hawaii's never lapsed, so that seven States and the District placed every premises in this industry under an airborne-transmission control that bound the operator and every person in the room. The fifty-State table on this page states the fifty-one rows; this section states the analysis by region.
The Northeast
New York closed barbershops, hair salons, tattoo and piercing parlors and nail salons at 8:00 p.m. on March 21, 2020 (Executive Order 202.7), reduced every non-essential in-person workforce to zero on March 22, barred non-essential gatherings of any size (which barred the funeral viewing) on March 23, reopened hair salons at fifty percent under the Department of State's Interim Guidance in Phase 2 regions from May 29, 2020 and New York City on June 22, reopened nail, massage, tattoo and waxing services under the Personal Care guidance in Phase 3 regions from June 12 and New York City on July 6, closed personal care again in the orange zones of the Cluster Action Initiative from October 6, 2020, and lifted the capacity caps on May 19, 2021 and the last rules on June 15, 2021.45 New Jersey closed eleven personal-care trades by name at 9:00 p.m. on March 21, 2020 and reopened them June 22 on the Division of Consumer Affairs' and Department of Health's standards, cut them to twenty-five percent from November 12, 2020, raised them to thirty-five percent from February 5, 2021 (Executive Order No. 219) and to fifty percent on March 19, 2021 and lifted the limits between May 28 and June 4, 2021; funerals were capped at ten and then at twenty-five percent up to 150.46 Pennsylvania closed every business that was not life-sustaining at 8:00 p.m. on March 19, 2020 (its NAICS list closing 8121 and 8129 and leaving 8122 and 8123 open), reopened personal care at fifty percent by appointment in green-phase counties from May 29, 2020, imposed the Secretary of Health's targeted mitigation on July 15 and the mitigation and enforcement order of November 23, 2020 with its telework mandate, moved to seventy-five percent on April 4, 2021 and lifted the orders May 31, 2021; the Department of State waived cosmetology and funeral rules by emergency order from March 26 and 30, 2020, continued by Act 21 of 2021 to September 30, 2021.47 Massachusetts closed personal care March 24, 2020, reopened hair salons May 25 and close-contact services June 22 under mandatory sector standards, cut them to forty percent December 13 and twenty-five percent December 26, 2020, and rescinded every general order May 29, 2021 while the Commissioner's face-covering order for certain settings, an airborne-transmission control on the settings it named, and the modified public health emergency ran on.48 Connecticut prohibited personal services March 20, 2020, reopened hair at fifty percent by appointment June 1 and other personal services June 17, moved to seventy-five percent by appointment October 8, 2020 and repealed the sector rules May 20, 2021.49 Rhode Island closed personal services March 23, 2020 (Providence two days earlier), reopened them June 1 under the Department of Health's regulations with mask-off services barred, and ran its sector rules to August 31, 2021 with face coverings for the unvaccinated.50 Vermont closed close-contact businesses March 23, 2020 and reopened hair salons by appointment May 29 and nail, spa and tattoo services June 1, lifting the limits June 14, 2021; New Hampshire closed them March 27 and reopened them May 11, 2020 by appointment for haircuts only; Maine closed them March 25 and reopened barbers May 1, 2020 under a mandatory checklist that lapsed June 30, 2021; Delaware closed them March 24, 2020, reopened them at thirty percent June 1 and sixty percent June 22 and lifted its restrictions May 21, 2021; and the District closed them March 25, 2020, reopened them May 29 by appointment with one customer per stylist and held that rule to May 21, 2021.51
The South
Texas directed on March 31, 2020 that "people shall avoid ... visiting gyms, massage establishments, tattoo studios, piercing studios, or cosmetology salons" and left in force the county orders of Dallas, Harris, Tarrant, Bexar, Travis, Denton and Fort Bend Counties that closed them outright; it reopened them May 8, 2020 under Executive Order GA-21 ¶ 12.a and the Department of Licensing and Regulation's Minimum Standard Health Protocols, held massage establishments closed to May 18, imposed the statewide face-covering order GA-29, an airborne-transmission control on every person in every business, from July 3, 2020 to March 10, 2021, cut the metros back to fifty percent under GA-32 in December 2020 and ended every operating limit March 10, 2021 under GA-34, which also barred the county health-and-safety-policy and face-covering mandates on businesses that Dallas and Harris Counties had kept in force since June 2020.52 Florida closed them April 3, 2020 under the Safer At Home order and reopened them May 11 under Executive Order 20-120 § 2 only for salons "that adopt appropriate social distancing and precautionary measures as outlined by the Department of Business and Professional Regulation," whose mandatory measures ran to September 25, 2020; from July 1, 2021 SB 2006 voided every local COVID order.53 Georgia closed them April 3 and reopened them April 24, 2020 under twenty enumerated requirements that the Governor carried in every biweekly order through April 7, 2021, with mandatory measures on every Organization to July 1, 2021; Tennessee closed nine close-contact trades March 30 and reopened them May 6, 2020 under the Close Contact Business Guidelines; Alabama closed close-contact providers March 28 and reopened them May 11, 2020; South Carolina closed them April 1 and reopened them May 18, 2020 at twenty percent; Mississippi closed them April 3 and reopened them May 11, 2020 under face-covering and screening terms that ran to March 3, 2021; Arkansas closed barber, body-art, cosmetology, massage and medical-spa establishments and their schools March 25 and reopened them May 6, 2020 by appointment; Louisiana closed them March 23, reopened them at twenty-five percent May 15 and fifty percent June 5, 2020 under the Open Safely sector rules, and imposed a statewide face-covering order, an airborne-transmission control on every person in every business, from July 13, 2020 to April 28, 2021 and again from August 4, 2021; Kentucky closed public-facing businesses that encourage congregation on March 18, 2020 and reopened salons May 25 at thirty-three and then fifty percent (June 25) under Healthy at Work requirements that ran to June 11, 2021; Virginia closed them March 24 and reopened them May 15, 2020 at fifty percent with one appointment per provider, required face coverings of everyone "inside all personal care and grooming establishments" and bound every employer to the nation's first COVID-19 workplace standard, the occupational-health and airborne-transmission controls of which the face covering was one, from July 27, 2020, made permanent January 27, 2021 and amended September 8, 2021; Maryland closed them March 23 and reopened them May 15, 2020 by appointment at fifty percent under conditions that ran to March 12, 2021; North Carolina closed them March 25 and reopened them May 22, 2020 at fifty percent, with a 10:00 p.m. curfew in the winter and the last orders lifted May 14, 2021; Oklahoma reopened them by appointment April 24, 2020; West Virginia closed barber shops, nail salons and hair salons by Executive Order 6-20 from March 20 and reopened them May 4, 2020.54
The Midwest
Illinois excluded "spas, salons, barber shops, tattoo parlors, and similar facilities" from the health-care exemption of its stay-home order on March 20, 2020 and kept them closed to May 29, reopened them May 29 in Phase 3 with no mask-off services and June 26 in Phase 4 at fifty percent with mask-off services permitted only under employee eye protection and office staff told to work from home, cut them to twenty-five percent with no mask-off services under Tier 3 from November 20, 2020, with the regions out of Tier 3 between January 15 and 22, 2021 and back to Phase 4 by February 4, lifted the limits June 11, 2021 and from August 30, 2021 ordered every person over two to wear a face covering in every indoor public place, with the employer's duty to enforce the requirement in its workplace added September 3.55 Michigan closed hair, nail, tanning, massage, spa and tattoo services from March 22, 2020 to June 15, 2020, barred technicians from homes for non-emergency work, bound every reopened shop by the Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity's workplace guidelines and then by the MIOSHA emergency rules of October 14, 2020, made personal care appointment-only with no mask-off services under the Department of Health and Human Services' orders from November 15, 2020, and rescinded the last of them June 22, 2021; the Detroit, Wayne County and Oakland County health officers re-imposed the same terms as local law when the Supreme Court of Michigan voided the Governor's orders on October 2, 2020.56 Ohio's Director of Health closed hair salons, day spas, nail salons, barber shops, tattoo parlors, body-piercing locations and massage establishments by order of March 19, 2020 and reopened them May 15 under an order providing that they "must require all employees to wear facial coverings," carried in amended orders to June 2, 2021.57 Minnesota closed them March 17 and reopened them June 1, 2020 at twenty-five percent, then fifty percent, with the caps ending May 28, 2021; Wisconsin closed them March 25 and the funeral gathering at fewer than ten in the same order, until the Supreme Court of Wisconsin invalidated the successor order May 13, 2020; Indiana closed them March 24 and reopened them May 11, 2020 by appointment; Iowa closed them by direct proclamation March 22 and reopened them May 15, 2020; Kansas closed them March 30 and reopened them May 18, 2020; North Dakota closed cosmetologists, salons, barbers, tattoo, tanning and massage by executive order from March 28 to April 30, 2020 and placed them under a face-covering order that every business was required to enforce on its workers, customers and visitors by State Health Officer Order 2020-08 of November 13, 2020 (effective 12:01 a.m. November 14) to January 18, 2021; Nebraska closed them by Directed Health Measure from April 10 to May 4-10, 2020; Missouri's closures came from St. Louis City and County, Kansas City, Boone County and Springfield from March 23-26, 2020, with the State's own order from April 6 to May 3; South Dakota's from Brookings and Sioux Falls.58
The West
California closed them under Executive Order N-33-20 and the Bay Area and Los Angeles County shelter orders of March 16-19, 2020, reopened hair salons by county variance from May 26, closed indoor personal care in thirty-two counties on July 13, 2020, reopened indoor hair under the Blueprint on August 31 and personal care by county tier from September 22, closed personal care entirely in the regions under the Regional Stay at Home Order from December 6 (Southern California and San Joaquin Valley) and December 17 (Bay Area) to January 25, 2021, held it to the tier caps through June 15, 2021, bound every employer to the Cal/OSHA emergency standard from November 30, 2020 and its readoption of June 17, 2021, and, from July 28, 2021, put every business to the choice of verifying vaccination, accepting attestation or requiring face coverings of everyone.59 Washington closed them March 16, 2020, reopened them in Phase 2 under the Personal Services Requirements of May 13, 2020, cut them to twenty-five percent from November 17, 2020, moved to fifty percent March 22, 2021, ended the caps June 30, 2021 and reinstated the indoor face-covering requirement for every person August 23, 2021, with the prohibition on any business admitting an uncovered person.60 Oregon closed them March 23, 2020 under an order that also prohibited office work "whenever telework and work-at-home options are available," reopened them May 15 under sector guidance carried by executive order to June 30, 2021, and reinstated the indoor face-covering requirement by rule August 13, 2021, with the operator's duty to ensure compliance and post notice under a civil penalty of up to $500 a day.61 Colorado closed nonessential personal services March 19, 2020, reopened them May 1, cut them to twenty-five percent at Level Red from November 20, 2020, handed the dial to the counties April 16, 2021 and kept setting-specific face-covering requirements and the Limited COVID-19 Restrictions in successive amendments of Public Health Order 20-38 through the third quarter of 2021 after the general face-covering order expired June 1, 2021 (Ex. CO-040).62 Nevada closed them March 20, 2020 (barring in-home service April 8), reopened them by appointment May 9, cut them to twenty-five percent November 24, 2020, thirty-five percent February 15 and fifty percent March 15, 2021 (Directive 037, Ex. NV-032), ended the limits June 1, 2021 and reinstated the indoor face-covering requirement for every person in Clark and Washoe Counties from July 30, 2021, an airborne-transmission control the Gaming Control Board applied to every licensed property's salon and spa.63 New Mexico ordered a one-hundred-percent reduction March 24, 2020, reopened them at twenty-five percent June 1, closed close-contact businesses and animal grooming from November 16 to 30, 2020, capped them at twenty-five percent in red counties, ended the county framework July 1, 2021 and reinstated the indoor face-covering requirement from August 20, 2021 alongside the COVID-Safe Practices its orders kept mandatory.64 Arizona closed them March 31 and reopened them May 8, 2020 by appointment with face coverings; Utah's Salt Lake, Summit, Weber-Morgan and Wasatch health departments closed them from March 23 to May 1, 2020; Idaho closed them March 25 and reopened them May 16, 2020; Montana closed them March 28 and reopened them April 27, 2020; Wyoming closed nail salons, hair salons, barber shops, massage and tattoo parlors by Statewide Public Health Order #3 from March 25 to May 1, 2020 and continued the order's conditions to February 28, 2021; Alaska closed personal care statewide by Health Mandate 009 from March 24 and reopened it April 24, 2020 at one customer per provider; Hawaii's four counties closed them under stay-at-home orders in March 2020 and Honolulu again from August 27 to September 23, 2020, kept them under tier conditions through 2021, and the State's face-covering order, with the Safe Travels quarantine-or-test regime and the gathering caps that ran beside it, never lifted in the period.65
The winter re-tightening of 2020-21
Seventeen jurisdictions re-closed or re-capped this industry between October 6 and December 26, 2020: New York (orange and red zones), Illinois (twenty-five percent; no mask-off services), Michigan (appointment-only; no mask-off services), Washington (twenty-five percent), Colorado (twenty-five percent at Red; closed at Purple), New Mexico (closed, then twenty-five percent), Massachusetts (forty then twenty-five percent), California (closed in three regions), Pennsylvania (fifty percent and telework), New Jersey (twenty-five percent), Oregon (funeral homes at twenty-five percent in the freeze), Delaware (funerals at thirty percent), Minnesota, Montgomery County (one customer per 200 square feet or twenty-five percent), Philadelphia, St. Louis County (twenty-five percent) and Johnson County, Kansas (appointment-only).66
The 2021 transition
The capacity, appointment and general face-covering conditions on the premises fell, State by State, on January 18 (North Dakota), January 30 (Nebraska), February 2 (Idaho), February 7 (Iowa), February 12 (Montana), March 3 (Mississippi), March 5 (South Carolina), March 10 (Texas), March 12 (Maryland's capacity; Oklahoma), March 16 (Wyoming), March 25 (Arizona), March 31 (Arkansas, Kansas, Wisconsin), April 6 (Indiana), April 8 (Georgia), April 16 (Colorado's State dial), April 27 (Tennessee), May 4 (Utah), May 7 (New Hampshire), May 14 (North Carolina), May 15 (Maryland's general face-covering order), May 19-29 (New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Kentucky's caps June 11), May 21 (Rhode Island, Delaware, the District), May 26 (Louisiana), May 28 (Minnesota, New Jersey, Virginia), May 31 (Pennsylvania, Alabama), June 1 (Nevada, Michigan's caps, Colorado's general face-covering order), June 2 (Ohio), June 11 (Illinois), June 14 (Vermont), June 15 (California, New York's last rules), June 20 (West Virginia), June 22 (Michigan's face-covering orders), June 30 (Washington, Oregon, Maine) and July 1, 2021 (New Mexico); the statewide face-covering orders fell between January 18, 2021 (North Dakota) and July 6, 2021 (Rhode Island), most of them between March 31 and June 28, and Hawaii's never lifted in the period; and the indoor face-covering orders, with their duties on the operator to post and enforce, returned between July 17 (Los Angeles County) and September 17, 2021 (Dayton).67
The preemption States
Texas barred local face-covering mandates on businesses from March 10, 2021 (GA-34), May 18, 2021 (GA-36, with fines on local officials from May 21) and July 29, 2021 (GA-38); Florida suspended local COVID orders May 3, 2021 and voided them July 1, 2021 (SB 2006) while enacting a prohibition on vaccination-proof requirements; Arizona barred enforcement of local rules not in place on March 11, 2020 from March 25, 2021 (Executive Order 2021-06) (Ex. AZ-037); Tennessee ended county face-covering authority in eighty-nine counties April 27, 2021 (Executive Order 80); Georgia suspended local orders that "conflict[ed], var[ied], or differ[ed]" from the State's on April 2, 2020 and again on August 19, 2021. In those States the third-quarter 2021 conditions on this industry came from the federal layer, the continuing disaster declarations, the courts and, in Texas, the county orders that Dallas, Bexar and Harris Counties issued in August 2021 notwithstanding GA-38 and that the Texas Supreme Court stayed, dissolved and, in 2023, held unlawful only after the period had run.68
The largest metros
The pattern
The metropolitan layer moved before the States, went further, stayed longer and returned first. Somerville closed "all personal and retail services offered to the public in person" on March 22, 2020, two days before the Commonwealth; Fort Bend County named hair and nail salons, spas, massage and tattoo parlors in a closure order of March 20, 2020 punishable by "a fine of up to $1,000 or confinement in jail for a term of up to 180 days"; DeKalb County cut nail salons, spas, beauty salons and barbers to ten persons on March 23; Wake County closed salons, spas, massage and tattoo March 23; Salt Lake County closed every hair, nail, spa, waxing, tattoo, massage and tanning business March 29; Cobb County closed them "regardless of their location (e.g., at home services)" April 2; and Summit County, Utah held salons to fifty percent with lobbies closed from March 23, 2020.69 The metros conditioned the reopening: Montgomery County, Maryland reopened salons by appointment June 1, 2020 and cut them to one customer per 200 square feet or twenty-five percent from November 10, 2020 to March 25, 2021; Baltimore County reopened hair-only salons May 22 and salons at fifty percent with other personal services closed May 29, 2020; Howard County held barbers and salons to fifty percent from May 29; Indianapolis to appointments from June 1; Philadelphia to fifty percent by appointment from June 26, 2020; New York City, whose hair salons reopened June 22 and other personal care services July 6, 2020, prohibited from July 7 by Emergency Executive Order No. 130 every "personal care service[] that require[s] customers to remove face coverings, including but not limited to, lip/nose piercings, face massages, facials, and lip/nose waxing"; Chicago barred mask-off services and later permitted them only under mask and eye protection; New Orleans reopened them at twenty-five percent by appointment May 16 and fifty percent June 13, 2020 and seventy-five percent March 12, 2021; Dane County at twenty-five percent from May 26, 2020; Denver at fifty percent and fifty persons from April 16 to May 15, 2021; Johnson County, Kansas to pre-scheduled customers from November 16, 2020 and again from March 25, 2021; Shelby County to appointment-only from December 26, 2020 to January 22, 2021.70 The metros re-closed: Los Angeles County closed all indoor personal care July 13-14, 2020, cut it to twenty percent and then closed it from November 30, 2020 to January 29, 2021, and held it to twenty-five percent from January 29 and seventy-five percent from May 6, 2021; Sacramento County closed salons and barbershops July 14, 2020, allowed outdoor service only from August 31, reopened indoors September 29 and closed them again from December 10, 2020 to January 12, 2021; San Diego County closed personal care April 9, 2020, reopened it June 19, closed it indoors July 15, required customer sign-in from October 10 and closed it from December 6, 2020 to January 25, 2021; Honolulu closed it again from August 27 to September 23, 2020; Detroit's October 9, 2020 order forbade any business to serve an unmasked customer and wrote rules for in-home services.71 The metros imposed workplace infection-prevention and exposure-control requirements first, with the face covering at their center and the business made answerable for the rule on its premises: Jefferson Parish on July 1, 2020, with the $500 fine and six months' confinement of La. R.S. 29:727(G) running against the business that admits an unmasked person; East Baton Rouge on July 3, 2020, requiring every business serving the public to post a "No Mask - No Service" policy and naming salons among the businesses required "to strictly adhere to the Governor's Executive Order and Open Safely Requirements"; Savannah on July 1, 2020, providing that "[a]ll restaurants, retail stores, salons, grocery stores, and pharmacies in the City MUST require their employees to wear a face covering at all times while having face-to-face interaction with the public"; Harris County, Dallas County and Fort Worth on June 22-26, 2020, requiring every commercial entity serving the public to adopt and post a health and safety policy with face coverings, with fines up to $1,000 per violation; Maricopa County, Tucson, Mesa and Tempe on June 18-22, 2020; Minneapolis on May 26, 2020, with a duty on "[a]ll employers of businesses that are spaces of public accommodation"; Cincinnati by ordinance July 9, 2020; Columbus by proclamation July 2 and ordinance July 7, 2020, reaching personal care and grooming by name.72 And the metros' indoor face-covering orders, airborne-transmission controls enforced against the premises by fine, license sanction or closure, returned in the third quarter of 2021: Los Angeles County (July 17: face coverings for everyone in "all indoor public settings and businesses" "regardless of vaccination status"), the City of Los Angeles and Long Beach (July 17), Pasadena (July 22), St. Louis City and County (July 26), Atlanta (July 28), Sacramento County (July 30: "all indoor public settings, venues, gatherings, and workplaces," with every business required to enforce the rule on patrons), New Orleans (July 31), Kansas City (August 2), Jefferson Parish (August 4), Prince George's County (August 5, effective August 8), Oak Park (August 6), Montgomery County, Maryland (August 7), Baltimore City (August 10, naming "Personal Services Establishments"), Jackson County (August 9), Johnson County (August 9, schools through grade six and school buses), Wyandotte County (August 6), Dallas County (August 11-16: "all commercial entities in Dallas County providing goods or services directly to the public must develop and implement a health and safety policy" requiring universal indoor masking, with a fine "not to exceed $1,000 for each violation"), Bexar County (August 11), Philadelphia (August 12: face coverings in "[a]ny indoor setting" unless the business verified the vaccination of everyone present), Raleigh (August 13), Wake County (August 16), Charlotte-Mecklenburg (August 18) and the Mecklenburg Board of Health Rule of August 31 ("All businesses, establishments, and public places must require that all persons wear Face Coverings when indoors on their premises"), Dane County (August 19), Chicago (August 20: "[a]ny individual, regardless of vaccination status ... shall be required to wear a mask when indoors in any public place," with closure as a sanction and masks removable only for shaves and facials), Somerville (August 20), Cook County (August 23, naming "personal services"), Boston (August 27) and Brookline (August 27), Cambridge (September 3, naming personal care establishments), Boulder County (September 3: "[a]ll individuals aged 2 or older must wear a Face Covering while entering or within any Public Indoor Space"), King County (September 7), Columbus (September 10 and 14) and Dayton (September 17).73 The metropolitan table on this page states the rows.
The sector regulators
The boards and departments
The licensing boards and departments that regulate this industry issued instruments that conditioned the revenue functions directly. The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation's Minimum Standard Health Protocols for cosmetology and hair salons, barber shops and nail salons (May 5, 2020) were the standards Executive Order GA-21 recommended when it reopened the trade ("should use good-faith efforts and available resources to follow the minimum standard health protocols recommended by DSHS") and that Dallas County made "mandatory rules" by county order on May 4, 2020 (the protocols are cited as that incorporated content; GA-21 and the county order are the instruments, and the compulsion statewide rests on the standing statutes and the shield's condition stated below); the Department's massage program announced that, under the Governor's orders, every massage establishment was closed from midnight March 20, 2020 and confined to medically necessary services until GA-23 on May 18, an announcement implementing those orders that is cited as context; the occupancy limits of GA-21 and its successors ran to March 10, 2021.74 Florida's Department of Business and Professional Regulation published on May 9, 2020 the mandatory measures on which Executive Order 20-120 conditioned every salon's reopening from May 11: "the following restrictions are mandatory ... All customers will be by appointment only ... No group appointments are permitted. Masks must be worn by all employees," in force to September 25, 2020.75 Virginia's Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation posted the businesses that "must close" on March 24, 2020, waived in-person theory instruction for cosmetology schools from March 13, 2020 to July 30, 2021 and extended credentials and examinations to the same date; the Board for Barbers and Cosmetology's own instrument of March 23, 2020 was superseded the next day by the Governor's closure.76 Illinois' Department of Financial and Professional Regulation extended cosmetology renewals to September 30, 2020 and permitted online theory instruction from March 18, 2020.77 California's Department of Consumer Affairs waived license renewal, continuing-education and examination requirements for Division 3 licensees, which include barbering and cosmetology and funeral directors and embalmers, in a chain of orders from April 2020 through DCA-21-195 of September 28, 2021, of which DCA-21-176 (July 2021) and DCA-21-195 were in force in the third quarter of 2021; its veterinary telemedicine waivers ran in a parallel chain to October 31, 2021.78 Pennsylvania's Department of State waived cosmetology and barber rules on March 26, 2020 and funeral-director rules on March 30, 2020, and the General Assembly continued every such suspension by Act 21 of 2021 to September 30, 2021 and by Act 73 to March 31, 2022.79 New Jersey's Department of Health issued the tanning and body-art protocols of June 13, 2020 on which Executive Order 154 conditioned reopening and, on July 4, 2021, the post-emergency protocols for the same trades; its Executive Directive 20-010 (Revised) governed the disposition of remains and placed viewings and graveside services under the gathering orders.80 Michigan's Department of Health and Human Services rewrote death-record and remains-handling rules by emergency order on April 4 and May 4, 2020; Louisiana's Proclamation 38 JBE 2020 governed funeral services and interments from March 31, 2020; and the Massachusetts Commissioner of Public Health's orders of 2021 kept face-covering requirements, airborne-transmission controls on the named settings, in the settings the Commonwealth's general orders had left.81 The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' visitation memorandum QSO-20-39-NH, as revised April 27, 2021 and in force throughout the third quarter of 2021, governed the entry of every contract barber and hairdresser into every nursing home in the United States and the reopening of every in-facility salon.82
The standing duties
Beneath the emergency orders lay a fourth layer that bound every salon, laundry, funeral home, grooming shop and repairer on every day of the six quarters, whether or not any order named it: the standing statutes that commanded every person to prevent and control communicable disease and every employer to furnish a safe and healthful workplace, the offense provisions that punished disobedience of health and emergency orders, the sanitary codes enforced by summary closure, and the liability shields that protected only the business that complied with governmental standards, guidance and protocols.83 Each is an order from an appropriate governmental authority: a statute or rule that commands conduct is an order, and a legislature, a health department, a labor department and an occupational-safety agency are each such an authority. The pandemic directives gave each standing duty its content. Eight States are stated below; the standing duties of every State are collected on the duties page of this site.
The orders' own conditions of operating
The reopening orders in these States permitted the trade on conditions, and the verbs are commands. Texas: "Every business establishment in Texas shall operate at no more than 50 percent of the total listed occupancy of the establishment" (the § 418.173 offense recited in every order); the DSHS protocols GA-21 incorporated with "should" are recommendations, made compulsory in Dallas County by county order and statewide by the standing statutes and the shield's condition below.84 Florida: salons reopened only where they "adopt appropriate social distancing and precautionary measures as outlined by the Department of Business and Professional Regulation," whose document read "the following restrictions are mandatory."85 New Jersey: reopening "provided that the facility complies with standards issued by the Division of Consumer Affairs and DOH."86 New York: reopened businesses "must be operated subject to the guidance promulgated by the Department of Health."87 Rhode Island: every covered entity "must take the following steps" under the Safe Activities regulation.88 California: sectors reopened "with certain modifications" whose guidance read "must," and from November 30, 2020 the Cal/OSHA standard bound every employer.89 Pennsylvania: in-person operation "provided that the businesses fully comply with all substantive aspects of" the safety orders "and all existing and future applicable guidance."90 Arizona: salons "may resume operations provided they establish and implement protocols and best practices ... including using face coverings for employees and customers, operating by appointment only."91 The face-covering clauses in these orders were workplace infection-prevention and exposure-control requirements beside screening, distancing, occupancy and sanitation, and a measure the Service calls "beyond the order" was, in each of these States, the order's own condition of operating.
The standing statutes
Standing law commanded the same conduct independently. Texas states the duty on the person: "The state has a duty to protect the public health. Each person shall act responsibly to prevent and control communicable disease," backed by a Class B misdemeanor and, in an area quarantine, a third-degree felony; and Labor Code § 411.103 adds that "Each employer shall" provide "a place of employment that is reasonably safe and healthful," use "methods of sanitation and hygiene" and "take all other actions reasonably necessary."92 Disobedience of a health or emergency order was an offense in each, from California's misdemeanor, "a separate offense for each day," to Arizona's class 1 misdemeanor, applied by arrest.93 Every employer owed a safe workplace by statute, "free from recognized safety and health hazards" (Rhode Island), "safe and healthful" (California), "reasonably safe and healthful ... including methods of sanitation and hygiene" (New Jersey), with "reasonable and adequate protection" for every person employed (New York and Pennsylvania) and, in New York, for every person "lawfully frequenting" the premises, "free from recognized hazards" (Arizona), and in Florida, which has no State general-duty statute for private employers, under the federal clause alone.94 Five of the eight wrote the pandemic duty into a workplace rule with its own force of law: California's emergency standard, New York's HERO Act plans, New Jersey's Executive Order No. 192, which from November 5, 2020 required every worksite to abide by its distancing, screening, face-covering and sanitation requirements "at minimum," Rhode Island's Safe Activities regulation and Pennsylvania's Worker Safety Order.95 Section 5(a)(1) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act bound every private employer in all eight: each "shall furnish to each of his employees employment and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm." OSHA cited under it from September 10, 2020 and obtained an adjudicated willful violation against a storefront tax office whose owner forbade face coverings and distancing, an employer of the size and kind of most employers in this industry.96 Every premises open to the public also operated under a standing sanitary duty enforced by summary closure or abatement order.97
The liability shields' compliance condition
The legislatures then fixed the standard of care. Texas protects a business from an exposure claim unless the claimant proves it "knowingly failed to implement or comply with government-promulgated standards, guidance, or protocols intended to lower the likelihood of exposure to the disease," for every action commenced on or after March 13, 2020.98 Florida immunizes only a defendant that "made a good faith effort to substantially comply with authoritative or controlling government-issued health standards or guidance."99 Arizona presumes good faith only for a business that "adopted and implemented reasonable policies related to the public health pandemic," retroactive to March 10, 2020.100 New York and New Jersey shielded health-care providers only, on compliance conditions, and left every other business to the ordinary standard of care; Rhode Island's standing shield reaches a disaster-response worker "complying with, or reasonably attempting to comply with" the emergency statute and its orders, and the Library locates no general business shield in that State.101 California enacted no shield and kept Evidence Code § 669's presumption of negligence from the violation of any statute or regulation; Pennsylvania enacted none, the Governor returning the bill because "[p]roviding immunity for a business that does not rigorously comply with public health orders does not ensure the safety of the public."102 In each of the eight, compliance with the governmental health standards is what the business owed; the salon that spaced its stations, booked by appointment, screened and sanitized was complying. The answers section applies this layer to the Service's Q&A-14 ground.
The counterparties
The customers
The stay-home orders of forty-two States and territories, the "avoid ... cosmetology salons" directive of Texas, the gathering caps that fixed the funeral and the wedding, the face-covering orders that fixed what the customer wore in the chair and which services could be performed on her, and the quarantine orders that fixed whether an exposed customer could keep her appointment are orders limiting commerce, travel and group meetings addressed to the customer base, and they are relied on as such.103
The laundry's accounts
Every commercial laundry's hotel, restaurant, office, gym, school and event customers were closed by the orders of March 16-24, 2020 (New York City's restaurants at 8:00 p.m. March 16; Illinois' at 9:00 p.m. the same night; Texas's bars and dining rooms March 20), capped through 2020 and re-closed in the winter of 2020-21 (California's indoor dining July 1 and December 6, 2020; New York City's December 14, 2020; Minnesota's, Michigan's, Washington's and Pennsylvania's in November and December), and the hospitals and nursing homes whose linen the laundry cleans were under visitation, testing and, from June 21, 2021, OSHA orders throughout.104
The health-care facilities
The visitation bans that excluded contract barbers as non-essential visitors, the CMS memoranda, the State long-term-care orders, the Healthcare Emergency Temporary Standard and the health-care-worker vaccination orders of August and September 2021 (California, New York, New Jersey, Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, Los Angeles County, Philadelphia, Denver) fixed which personal-care and funeral personnel could enter a facility and on what proof.105
The workforce's schools and child care
Schools closed statewide in every State in March 2020; the 2020-21 year opened remote in the largest districts; and the 2021-22 year opened under face-covering and quarantine orders in New Jersey, Illinois, Washington, California, Louisiana, Kentucky, Oregon, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Oakland and Wayne Counties, Harris County, Denver, Boulder County, the Tri-County Health Department and Jefferson County, Colorado, among others, with quarantine standing orders on exposed persons in Rhode Island, San Diego County, Los Angeles County, Arkansas, Indiana and Kansas.106
Transit
The federal conveyance order and the transit agencies' own rules governed the commute of every worker who rode a bus or a train from May 2020 (Metro Transit, King County Metro, Bi-State, LA Metro, BART) and from February 1, 2021 by federal law.107
Courts and public offices
The judicial emergency orders of every State closed courthouses, suspended jury trials and moved the estate, collection, landlord-tenant and licensing matters in which funeral homes, landlords and laundries appear to remote hearings from March 2020, and in the third quarter of 2021 the Supreme Court of Texas's Fortieth Emergency Order, Virginia's Twenty-Sixth and Twenty-Eighth Orders, Maryland's Third Amended Administrative Order, Kentucky's Administrative Orders 2021-27 and 2021-28, Hawaii's postponement of every jury trial, Utah's, South Dakota's, Idaho's, Rhode Island's, Tennessee's, Vermont's, Iowa's, Wisconsin's, Minnesota's and the District's court orders were in force.108
Landlords
The CARES Act moratorium, the CDC eviction orders, the FHFA moratoria, New Jersey's Executive Order 106 and its 2021 phase-out, New York's eviction acts of May 4 and September 2, 2021, Minnesota's phase-out and the local moratoria of Seattle, Los Angeles County, Boston and Somerville governed the landlords of this industry's premises and the households of its workforce.109
The ecosystem
The mechanisms
The orders reached this industry through six mechanisms that the ecosystem section states in full: (1) supply chains and borders (the Defense Production Act orders and the scarce-materials designation on the masks, gloves and disinfectants every reopening order required a salon to stock; the plant closures of Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey on the professional-beauty, casket and chemical supply; the land-border and entry orders on imported goods and travelers); (2) the workforce, its schools and its child care; (3) travel, tourism and gatherings (the traveler quarantines of Hawaii, Chicago, San Francisco, Kauai, Pennsylvania and Maryland; the gathering caps on the funeral and the wedding); (4) courts and public offices; (5) transit; and (6) health care as counterparty.110 The organizers' notices of the trade shows, conventions, competitions, expositions and recurring gatherings on which this industry's selling, training and licensing depended, and which those orders cancelled, converted or capped in 2020 and 2021, are held in the Library with the venue jurisdictions' instruments and are listed with this industry's records. The Federal Reserve's Beige Books of April 15, 2020, July 14, 2021 and September 8, 2021 record the contraction, the supply bottlenecks and the Delta-wave deceleration in the words of the Reserve Banks' own contacts.111
The territories
Puerto Rico closed private-sector operations at 6:00 p.m. March 15, 2020; from August 30, 2021 its OE-2021-064 required the employees of gyms, beauty salons, barbershops, spas, child-care centers, casinos and supermarkets to be vaccinated or tested weekly, and OE-2021-065 ordered indoor face coverings and a midnight-to-5:00 a.m. closing from September 2, 2021, extended September 20. Guam closed non-essential operations under Executive Order 2020-05 from March 20, 2020 and required vaccination of executive-branch workers (Executive Order 2021-17, August 6, 2021) and of patrons of covered establishments (Executive Order 2021-19, August 20; Executive Order 2021-20, August 24, 2021). The Virgin Islands closed personal care from March 25 to May 4, 2020 and again from August 17 to September 8, 2020, and kept its General Orders, gathering rules and midnight closure through the third quarter of 2021. The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands closed them from March 19, 2020 and reimplemented restrictions August 24, 2020.112
Foreign orders
The border closures, entry bans and quarantine rules of Canada, Mexico, the European Union, the United Kingdom, China, India and Brazil are facts and circumstances that fixed the tourist, the business traveler and the imported product on which resort spas, hotel laundries and airport barbers depend; they are stated here by category and are not relied on as orders of an appropriate governmental authority of the United States.113