Yes I would prefer the legislature eliminate good character requirements anywhere they exist, but until then ‘As applied’ challenges would be the next best thing. If those responsible for applying the standard defined it in an objective way that would be third best.
But really, it’s just a means to discriminate.
Thanks for that and not just because it proves I was totally right all along. 
Changing that last paragraph to include some more general version of “good character” would be ripe for abuse and be uncomfortably intrusive. We don’t need bar owners to be good guys, we just need them to run a bar properly. The last local I used to frequent, before I threw it all away for marriage, was kiiind of an asshole but the world kept on ticking.
I talked to a bar owning friend, and he agreed that it only was about alcohol. There’s a “Clean hands” clause somewhere, which means that you can’t owe DC any money. If you’ve been involved with a bar that had multiple violations–like you were the GM of a place that had several incidents where minors were served alcohol–you won’t get a license even if you never were personally charged. Also you can’t get a license if you’ve had a DUI.
We also had a laugh at the idea of Trump trundling on down to the ABRA offices on 14th street. He almost certainly does not have the actual liquor license for that place, and I doubt Ivanka does either.
Thank-you. The OP could have saved himself a lot of trouble by looking this up instead of insisting that Trump couldn’t possibly pass the “good character” test. I’m also very disappointed in the guy on the ABRA that I quoted earlier who claimed there was no definition in the statute. There clearly is.
Larry, my hat is off to you for posting a very convincing and well researched counterpoint. It was something sorely missing in this thread, and you knocked it out of the park.
Setting aside Larry’s cite, I fail to see what element of Trump’s character will come to be seen as healthy and normal in the future, except in some dystopia. Will his racism become mainstream? His constant stream of lies? His unethical business practices?
Oh, give me a break. If the test of a debate is comprehensive knowledge being a prerequisite to participation, do you (and your many tens of thousands of posts) maintain that you meet that test?
After all, we had quite a few quite clever posters who couldn’t provide what Larry did, and insisted on half baked arguments chock full of straw men and “nuh-uh!” and ad hominem for the majority of this thread.
Getting back to the relevant definition of “good character,” my hunch is that every district in the country has this requirement, and the fact that Trump holds liquor licenses in New York, New Jersey and Florida and has not yet been convicted of any felonies probably meets whatever hurdles DC imposes on liquor license applicants. DC wants its driving and business licenses recognized as authentic in the 50 states (which, as a territory, may be more difficult than it sounds) and has to accept a degree of reciprocity to get a degree of reciprocity. Scoring political points against a locally-unpopular President on the front end is not worth the cost at the back end.
If Trump didn’t get a liquor license in DC, my driving privileges in New Jersey would be at risk?
Huh?
You have got to be kidding. It probably took him 2 minutes to find that and all it was is the text of the law you were talking about. I know the WaPo article describing relevant case law took me about 30 seconds. The only reason I didn’t bother earlier in the thread was because the case laid out in the OP was so ridiculous it didn’t seem even worth that much.
And yet for so long, your argument was, “Think if the other degenerate bar owners!”
No, it wasn’t.
Oh, I forgot. You started off with nuh-uh, and that’s where you have most recently ended up.
History repeats itself.
Boy, when you’re wrong you go all in.
Well I’ve worked in bars in DC, so I know where to go to look up the code.
As an aside, it is also against the code to serve “Persons of notoriously intemperate habits.” I did not believe this until I looked it up. Notoriously intemperate habits are nowhere defined as far as I can tell. I assume it refers to the town drunk, but half the regulars at any bar are the town drunk. My guess is it’s an old piece of writing that is never enforced but no one has bothered to take off the books.
The one thing that surprises me is that if I, a lowly service industry employee, can find the law how come the judges and clergymen pressing this didn’t bother to look it up? I can only guess they aren’t really serious and are just doing it to troll Trump.
See the post I made on the first page (#8) where a guy on the ABRA claims there is no definition.
I just googled “district Columbia liquor license code”. The first hit had the pdf link. A text search on the word “character” when I opened the pdf brought me immediately to the relevant section. Less than 30 seconds. The people pushing this obviously don’t give a crap.
Oh DC government, don’t ever change.
Sorry if this is flogging a dead horse, but I talked to a couple more licensees and thought I’d share. The main thing they said was that this just doesn’t come up. No one really mentions your character in the process. It’s mostly straightforward questions like whether you owe DC money or whether you have a criminal record. There are other issues at play to, like their could be a moratorium on new liquor licences for a certain neighborhood. They do look at your employment history and I suppose it could come up if something really shady showed up in your background, but no one had any recollection of that even being brought up.
This might be the source of the ABRA guys confusion that John Mace brought up. He just never used that part of the law and, speaking off the cuff, forgot that there is a definition.
Ugh, the grammar in that post. Sorry!