You’ve seen the sign so often that you don’t think twice about it. But you also don’t enter stores when you’re shirtless or shoeless. No one pulls out a weapon while demanding to enter a retail establishment. No one proclaims that their First Amendment rights are being abridged by that store or restaurant.
How is “No shirt, no shoes, no service” different from “No mask, no service”? What makes the latter a violation of one’s Constitutional right of free expression while the former is a common-sense hygiene caution to potential customers?
There are few, if any, laws on the books in any state, county, or municipality that legally bar individuals from entering a place of business while barefoot or without a shirt of some type, yet all (OK, nearly all) Americans obey those signs without a second thought. And they’re perfectly fine with it.
Private spaces posting “No shirt, no shoes, no service” signs are doing so only on their own authority; there’s no government coercion or bureaucratic gobbledygook behind the admonition in such signs.
The question, then, is what (aside from the break in cadence and sounds) makes “No shirt, no shoes, no mask, no service” any different?