One of the many unfortunate social consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic was the “lockdown” mentality, which caused many authorities to act “in a monomaniacal and heavy-handed manner out of whack even with what we came to know about the virus relatively early on,” as I wrote last month. Government action circumscribed much of life, as restaurants, schools, public events, and more all shuttered or drastically scaled back in response to top-down diktats and guidance.

Last year, I wrote about some of the subjects of this lockdown regime who resisted it, including a Pennsylvania gym owner who defied his state’s closure edicts and consequently suffered immense fines, shutting his gym down. He was hardly the only Pennsylvanian to be so mistreated. Even as we leave such mistreatment behind, some bars and restaurants are still being punished for violating Covid-era lockdown rules.

Eric Boehm at Reason has the story. The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board is forcing conditional-licensing agreements — stipulation-laden arrangements typically applied to troublesome joints prone to ordinary nuisance (underage drinking or excessive noise) — on places that fell afoul of Covid restrictions. And not necessarily on willful renegades. One, for example, was cited for “things as innocuous as allowing a band to use the bar’s power supply for an outdoor concert, and for a private indoor gathering at a time when bars were required to be closed to the public.”

Fortunately, the legislature is currently considering legislation that would end this post-lockdown punishment. Boehm writes that the bills “would prohibit the PLCB from revoking or suspending any liquor license due to a failure to comply with COVID-19 orders from the state’s governor and Department of Health, and they would force the PLCB to remove any disciplinary actions already taken against licensees.”

Legislators advocating the bills consider them a necessary step to move on from lockdown excesses. They’re right. Such policies were heavy-handed even then, as Josh Shapiro, now the state’s governor and its attorney general during the lockdowns, has since admitted. The businesses that survived them shouldn’t be penalized now for what they did during that time. And even as the rest of us continue to leave that period behind, we should remember its follies, lest we repeat them.