A South Jersey gym is suing Bellmawr for $10 million over COVID-19 shutdown
Frank Trumbetti, who owns Atilis Gym, says Bellmawr officials retaliated against him because of his statements against COVID-19 business closures.
The owner of a Bellmawr gym is suing a slew of borough officials for $10 million, claiming he has been the subject of retaliation since he made national headlines in 2020 by defying New Jersey’s COVID-19 business-closure orders.
Atilis Gym owner Frank Trumbetti is accusing Bellmawr’s mayor, six current and former borough council members, police officers, and other officials of having violated his First Amendment rights and denied him due process when issuing citations against his gym and revoking his mercantile license.
The federal lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District of New Jersey last month, is the latest turn in a yearslong dispute between the Camden County borough and the gym that it deemed a nuisance. It rehashes some of the arguments Trumbetti made in a New Jersey state court case that he lost.
But this time, Trumbetti says he is owed millions in damages because local government officials violated his civil rights.
The complaint says Atilis Gym angered borough officials because he became “an international symbol of defiance against, what we now know, were ineffective public health measures.”
“Once that becomes government’s motivation, that calls into question everything else,” said John McCann, an attorney for Trumbetti.
Bellmawr’s mayor, Chuck Sauter, did not respond to a request for comment.
In May 2020, while Gov. Phil Murphy’s business shutdown order was still in place, Atilis Gym reopened as a crowd of supporters cheered.
The gym racked up citations, including one for disorderly conduct. But it also gained supporters, becoming a local battleground against business closures.
Trumbetti and his then-business partner, Ian Smith, were defiant.
“We firmly believe that everything we are doing is constitutional. It’s our right, and we have not broken any laws,” Trumbetti said at the time.
The New Jersey Department of Health shut down the gym less than a week after it reopened. But again, the owners vowed to reopen.
The fight between officials and the gym continued into the summer of 2020 and included the arrest of the owner-duo, a contempt-of-court ruling from a Camden judge, and a video showing the two kicking down plywood that law enforcement erected to barricade the gym.
That August, the Bellmawr Borough Council voted to revoke the gym‘s mercantile license. State and local fines on the gym surpassed $130,000 at the time.
McCann said that Atilis Gym paid the state fines and that the borough overreached when it became involved.
“It was unnecessary piling on by the local government,” the attorney said.
The new federal complaint contends that the borough council was motivated to revoke the gym‘s license because of statements Trumbetti made about the business-closure orders and police officers who served citations, as well as becoming a “rallying place” for a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate.
For example, the complaint says, in a hearing about the future of the gym, Bellmawr Council member James D’Angello urged his peers to take action against the facility, noting Trumbetti’s comments about police officers and the attention surrounding the conflict, according to the complaint.
“So, now the seven of us here have to make decision on a circus that is continually going through this town,” the council member said, according to the suit.
D’Angello, who is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, did not respond to a request for comment.
Because the gym lost its mercantile license, it received more citations in 2022, after the COVID-19 orders were lifted. The lawsuit claims the borough officials also targeted the gym‘s landlord.
The gym is open, McCann said.