It’s getting tough to run a nightclub in Texas these days, especially if it’s of the honky tonk variety. Pop country hits and a smooth dance floor just aren’t enough to keep the kickers happy, no matter how many times you play “Friends in Low Places.” To have Gilley’s-esque flirting and fighting, you need booze to flow. Unfortunately for Dallas Night Club, that booze attracted the attention of APD, leading to subsequent undercover operations and arrests courtesy of the sternly paternalistic folks over at the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission.

In retaliation, Dallas Night Club is suing the TABC, accusing the state agency of unfairly targeting the bar and harshing the pop country buzz they’ve been dishing out for over two decades. The lawsuit asserts that the commission’s enforcement efforts are unconstitutional - invoking a little-known provision in the Civil Rights Act that prevents discrimination against pressed Wranglers - and accuses the TABC of “a deliberate and knowing course of conduct to drive Dallas out of business.”

About 200 miles north of Burnet Rd, Phil Jones might be thinking those exact words. The CEO of the Dallas Convention and Visitors Bureau is incensed that TABC has been making similar P.I. arrests in Big D. Unlike the eponymous Austin nightclub where everyone has to drive to and from their 69-cent beer, the Dallas CVB has out-of-towners getting busted in their hotel bars before they even THINK of driving. Consequently, convention organizers are threatening to cancel their Dallas events and move to places with a more permissive attitude towards drunken shenanigans. Jones commented that “if you think they would even consider doing something like this in Las Vegas, you’re fooling yourself,” not least because TABC’s jurisdiction ends in El Paso.

It’s hard to imagine a less sympathetic threesome. First, there’s the cheesy nightclub that leads the city in drunk driving arrests, suing for its right to sell beer at 1977 prices. Next there’s the big city tourism organization, complaining that Dallas visitors should be given more leeway to embarrass themselves at Dick’s Last Resort rather than in hotel lobbies. And finally, the TABC are the jack-booted embodiment of Bible Belt morality, making up their own rules as they violate the unwritten Texan commandment “thou shall not get in the way of good times.”

Fortunately this conflict appears headed for the public forum of a Texas court room, where the confluence of trial lawyers and political judges may provide unpredictable entertainment, if not resolution.