Who Is Responsible When a Gay Bar Isn’t Safe?

When the gunman who killed five people at Club Q opened fire in November 2022, queer bars across Colorado took a hard look at how they would protect their patrons.

Nearly four years later, a federal appeals court has ruled that the shooting victims and relatives of the dead cannot sue the bar’s owner over its security measures. 

But for bar owners and managers across the state, the question of who could be held responsible after a shooting is secondary to a more immediate one: What can they do to keep their patrons alive?

On Wednesday, a three-judge panel in the 10th Circuit Court ruled that victims of the Club Q shooting did not have the right to sue the club’s owner, Matthew Haynes, for wrongful death due to insufficient security and lack of evacuation protocol.

The decision upheld an earlier ruling by Senior U.S. District Judge William J. Martínez, who had previously tossed out the lawsuit in lower federal court after determining that Colorado law heavily protects property owners from third-party violence.

Finn San Agustin, currently the general manager at ICONS in Colorado Springs, was bartending the night of the shooting in November 2022. He received a text minutes after a gunman opened fire at Club Q, alerting him to the danger. Being the only other LGBTQ+ bar in Colorado Springs, he and the staff immediately locked the doors and sent patrons home.

“We were very scared because we weren’t sure if it was a targeted attack on queer spaces or if we would be next,” he said.

While the shooting pushed ICONS to implement much stricter security measures — bulletproof glass protecting the bar’s exterior, professional armed security guards stationed outside and staff trained on evacuation plans — San Agustin said he and the bar’s owners have chosen to focus more on preventive measures and caring for their community than the potential lawsuits that could come after a shooting.

“If, God forbid, we were ever in a situation like that, I know we would use every resource available to take care of our people,” San Agustin said.

Sabina Palermo began thinking about security measures before she even applied for a liquor permit to open Denver’s newest sapphic bar, Wild Tulips. As a queer bar catering to women, gender-nonconforming people and people of color, she feels an added target on the bar’s back.

Wild Tulips is set to open in October. Palermo plans to have a bouncer stationed outside every day, with an armed security guard and staff watching the floor on weekends to ensure safety both inside and outside the bar.

Palermo said the decision to hire armed guards was difficult. She is morally and politically against gun usage and understands many queer people share her beliefs.

“But if it makes even a handful of people feel more comfortable, that is what matters to me,” Palermo said. “And I would rather be over-prepared than be in a situation where we have a shooter and we have to wait for the police to arrive.”

Palermo, who had not heard about the court’s decision for Club Q survivors before her interview with LOOKOUT, agreed with San Agustin that lawsuits would be the least of her concern if her bar was shot up.

“That is such a traumatic event to undergo that I can’t imagine what every person who was involved in any capacity, including the owner, has gone through,” Palermo said. “The only place my brain would be at would be the trauma.”

In a year when LGBTQ+ people are facing record levels of legislation attempting to restrict their rights and hate crimes against the community are among the top three reported hate crime categories, all four bar managers and owners interviewed said gay bars have an extra responsibility to serve as both physical and emotional safe spaces.

“We’re in a unique position being in a small town because we’re the only gay bar, and we’re one of a limited number of spaces where our community can gather and celebrate as openly as they’d like to,” said Jesse Daniels, owner of Good Judy’s, the only gay bar in Grand Junction.

Daniels said two years ago, when he opened the bar, he faced a security threat so serious that he had to cancel an event and shut the bar down for a night, though he declined to share details of the incident so as to “not give anyone any ideas.”

“But we learned from that and now we are very vigilant and aware of what’s going on both around us and online,” Daniels said. The bar has cameras surrounding it and a security system linked directly to the Grand Junction Police Department.

Over the two years since he opened the bar, Daniels said many of the day-to-day safety issues have come from LGBTQ+ people inside the bar who’ve had too much to drink or have had issues with other patrons.

“Sometimes you have to protect the community from itself,” Daniels said. “And that’s the part of the conversation no one really thinks about.”

At X Bar, one of Denver’s gay bars located in the stretch of Lavender Hill that encompasses four of the city’s explicitly LGBTQ+ bars, manager Drew Hopkins said Club Q was “a very scary wake-up call that we had to ramp things up.”

Prior to the shooting, X Bar only had door attendants who handled what they could and called the police when necessary. The bar now has its own security license and hires guards who are specifically trained to work with the LGBTQ+ community. The guards are armed and inside the bar every weekend.

“We’re not just bringing in random macho guys who have guns on them,” Hopkins said. “Everyone knows our security by name, and I think that’s a huge difference from when we were hiring private security.”