Salon owner sues Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, accusing Democrat of retaliating over lockdown defiance

Oregon salon owner Lindsey Graham has filed a lawsuit against her state, its Democratic Gov. Kate Brown, and a number of agency officials, seeking $100,000 in damages after being hit with fines and even a visit from child welfare workers after Graham defied COVID-19 lockdown orders.

What are the details?

Graham says Brown retaliated against her, her business, and her family for reopening her Glamour salon in May, violating the state's stay-at-home order. After reopening, Oregon's Occupational Safety and Health Division hit her with a $14,000 fine and the state's Child Welfare Division sent workers to search her home, questioning her, her husband, and one of her kids.

"I've never expected such a violent, aggressive, vindictive thing could have ever been done to me or my family," the business owner of 15 years said at the time.

Graham filed a lawsuit Dec. 18 against a slew of state officials including Brown herself, alleging that the defendants violated Graham's U.S. and state constitutional rights, intentionally inflicted emotional distress on the salon owner, and abused processes in order to target Graham in retaliation.

The lawsuit states:

"While individuals and businesses such as Graham and Glamour struggled to make ends meet for nearly six (6) weeks, government employees like Defendant Kate Brown and the other individual named defendants did not have to worry about where their next paycheck would come from."

The suit also claims:

"Defendant Kate Brown grew increasingly frustrated with the fact that Graham and Glamour refused to bow down to her authority. Defendant Kate Brown publicly called Graham and Glamour's 're-opening' 'unfortunate' and 'irresponsible' — only further making Graham and Glamour a target by the government."

'She came at me with the full weight of the state'

"As soon as I tried to open my doors against the governor's mandate back in May, she came at me with the full weight of the state," Graham told Fox News' "The Ingraham Angle" with Laura Ingraham on Monday. "She terrorized myself, she terrorized my stylists, and she terrorized my family. She took every government agency she could, and she put her full weight into intimidating me into closing, including sending Child Protective Services to my home and threatening the removal of my children."

Graham noted that CPS showed up on her doorstep just a few days after her salon reopening, claiming they were acting on an anonymous call.

"[They] opened a full-blown case against me which was completely bogus and unwarranted, and it didn't come until I shot back at them with a threat of the lawsuit" that they closed the case, she told Fox News.

KATU-TV reached out to Gov. Brown's office last week seeking comment on the lawsuit, but has not yet received a response.