Texas woman jailed during covid elected to state legislature

A Texas woman jailed for operating her salon despite COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns is moving from the big house to the state house.

Shelley Luther was ordered to jail for seven days in 2020 after Dallas County judge found her guilty of civil and criminal contempt of court, according to Fox 4 Dallas.

Luther had refused to shutter the business during lockdown. She was only released from jail after the personal intervention of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

Now, however, she’s moving to the Lone Star state legislature, where she was elected this week to represent the northeast 62d district. Luther, a Republican, defeated Democrat Tiffany Drake with roughly 75% of the vote.

“After about a month, my hairstylist were calling me saying I can’t feed my kids, I don’t know what to do, so we just made the decision to open back up, and I ended up in jail,” Luther told Fox and Friends.

“I wasn’t super political before any of this, but I’m like, you know, somebody has to do something about this. And so we ran for our first office shortly after that.”

Host Rachel Campos-Duffy noted that during the pandemic, some salons were allowed to stay open — specifically those which catered to Democratic leaders like then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot.

Luther said she was lucky to be alive after having suffered a brain injury during the campaign.

“I had a brain aneurysm a month and a half ago and almost died. And so for me to walk out of that, being in the ICU for almost 30 days, the recovery from that, and then putting my name in to run … I knew it was my time,” she said.