Gym CEO suing Arizona over coronavirus lockdown: We may not survive another month closed

The CEO of an Arizona health club company defying Gov. Doug Ducey's order closing of gyms and several other types of businesses told FOX Business he doesn't know if his business will survive another month of closure.

ARIZONA GOVERNOR SUED BY GYM COMPANY OVER CORONAVIRUS CLOSURE

Mountainside Fitness CEO Tom Hatten is suing the governor over his "arbitrary" decision to re-close gyms as coronavirus cases surge.

"If we do not get a stay, we then do close," Hatten said. "I don’t know whether our business is going to survive. ... We had to furlough 1,350 employees in March."

FOX Business' inquiry to Ducey's office was not immediately returned.

Hatten said his employees are "scared to death" and that he was unable to qualify for federal or state aid because of Mountainside's size.

"We carried on some of their payroll, it was a quarter of a million dollars a month, kept everybody insured," he said.

In addition, an employee at Mountainside's Scottsdale location was cited by law enforcement on Tuesday because Hatten chose to keep his health clubs open despite Ducey's order to close Monday night, he said.

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"We have asked municipalities today to stop that. That’s fearmongering," Hatten said. "They know where my office is. ... It was our belief if we got cited, it would be the business."

Hatten will know Monday whether a judge is granting Mountainside a stay of Ducey's order so that the full case can go to court at a later date. That's the "best-case scenario," he said.

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"[W]e are instituting a month-long pause on the operations of bars, gyms, movie theaters, waterparks and tubing rentals. This will help relieve stress on our health care system and give time for new transmissions to slow," Ducey wrote on Twitter on Monday.