Danville and Junction City each had local option elections three years ago under this law. Danville voters passed a measure in which restaurants can apply for limited liquor licenses. In Junction City, the same kind of measure failed by a small margin.
Junction City will be able to have another local option vote on limited restaurant sales, Humphress said. However, Humphress said Junction City cannot have packaged liquor sales unless there is a wet vote in the county.
Hargis said that amounts to discrimination against small cities, and he is going to ask the Office of the Attorney General to make a ruling on the matter.
"It might take a judge" to sort out the law, Hargis said. "It's not about the store (any) more it's about equal rights."
Hargis says it's unfair for voters in larger cities to be able to vote for packaged liquor sales, but not voters in fifth and sixth class cities.
Hargis filed his ABC application based on his research of records from the 1940s that he says proves Junction City voted to go wet and that there was never another election to reverse that decision.
Humphress' explanation
Here is Humphress' explanation of the 1940s and subsequent liquor laws:
At the time, cities in counties that had not had wet-dry votes were allowed to have local option votes. Junction City had an election to go wet.
Case law at the time developed something called a county-unit rule, meaning after those counties had a wet-dry vote then the outcome would apply to the cities in the county as well.
When Boyle County went dry, so did Danville and Junction City, even though both cities were wet at the time.
