Liquor control commissioners, facing a state senator's directive to tighten rules around Utah's infamous Zion Curtain, passed that task back to the Legislature on Wednesday because they couldn't come up with a way to comply.
In Utah, it's illegal to serve drinks of any kind -- even nonalcoholic ones -- over a restaurant counter. To comply with the law, many restaurants have erected a glass partition along counters to separate diners from bottles of booze. These partitions have come to be known as Zion Curtains.
The rules are so tangled, that when a diner orders a glass of wine at a counter, the server must walk around the bar and deliver the order from behind the customer.
But when Senate President Michael Waddoups decided earlier this month that more needed to be done to obscure diners' views of bartenders mixing drinks in restaurants, the responsibility was put in liquor commissioners' hands.
On Wednesday, they handed it back.
"Our current regulatory system makes Utah look silly," said commissioner Gordon Strachan. "As talented as our staff is in drafting rules, we need the Legislature to make a decision" on whether to drop partition requirements.
But Commissioner Kathryn Balmforth said restaurants -- not the state -- are responsible for putting up the glass barriers that have become a laughingstock and during the 2002 Olympics were a popular tourist photograph.
"What is called silly are not things that this commission or the Legislature came up with," she said. "All this silliness came about by the (restaurant) industry to get around the intent of the law. Industry invented glass walls and threw it back to us and said, 'You guys are silly.' "
Balmforth, who cast the only "no" vote in passing issue along to lawmakers, said the commission has the power to enforce the law.
As an alternative to glass partitions, Strachan said lawmakers may want to consider prohibiting minors from bar areas at restaurants.
Commissioner Bobbie Coray agreed that glass partitions are "ridiculous," but she wondered what would be gained by banning minors from lunch counters when "they can sit at a table in a restaurant and watch their parents drink a glass of wine."
Earl Dorius who supervises compliance for the Utah Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, said that until a 2001 federal appeals court ruling, all alcohol was hidden from view in Utah restaurants. The decision by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a state ban against liquor advertising and displays on free-speech grounds.
Restaurants, in turn, took down wooden barriers "from the good old days" and erected glass partitions in their place, said Dorius. State regulators then passed a flurry of rules to soften the effect of the court decision.
Among the rules: Bartenders may hand drinks directly to customers in private clubs and taverns. But in restaurants, servers are not allowed to pass drinks or even food over lunch counters where alcohol is served or stored.
Also, glass partitions are used at restaurants that serve alcohol but not at clubs or taverns. And that can be confusing when bars and restaurants are separated by a few feet in the same eating establishment.
