The owner of a Vicksburg restaurant claims in a lawsuit filed Thursday that he is being discriminated against by a recent Mississippi Department of Revenue decision that revoked his and three other businesses’ resort status.

The suit, filed in Hinds County Chancery Court on behalf of David Belden and his business, KJ’s River Town Grille, names the city and the Department of Revenue as defendants. It accuses city officials and the Department of Revenue of “violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution” by revoking the restaurant’s resort status while allowing the city’s four casinos to retain theirs.

Mayor George Flaggs Jr. announced the suit at the start of Friday’s meeting of the Board of Mayor and Aldermen.

The suit comes about four weeks after the Department of Revenue on Dec. 19 pulled resort status from four businesses in the city — KJ’s, Monsour’s at the Biscuit Company, LD’s Restaurant and the Beechwood Restaurant — at the city’s request.

The Board of Mayor and Aldermen passed a resolution on Dec. 10 asking the state to pull the resort status. At the time of the resolution, the board said the move was done to improve safety in the downtown area.

Resort status is granted by the Mississippi Department of Revenue and allows a business to sell alcohol 24 hours a day. Revoking that status means the hours of alcohol sales are regulated by the city. Vicksburg’s ordinances cut off sales at 2 a.m. The new cutoff time went into effect Friday.

After the status was pulled, the business owners said they were never told about the plan. Flaggs and North Ward Alderman Michael Mayfield Monday disputed the owners’ claims, saying they told them in advance what they were going to do.

Monsour’s owner Eddie Monsour said he was never told about the board’s intentions, adding after he read the mayor’s and Mayfield’s comments, he called them both and left messages on their respective voice mails saying he was never contacted. Neither official has returned his call, he said.

Will Nosser, co-owner of Beechwood also said he was not contacted, but said the change would not affect his business “because around 2 everyone’s had enough and ready to leave.” He added he hoped the board would extend the last call on special occasions like RiverFest. LD’s owner Larry Prentiss declined to comment.

“I did not know when the vote was cast,” said Harry Sharp, who owns the building KJ’s and the bar once known as the Upper End occupies. He said he wanted to get on the agenda for the Dec. 10 meeting to discuss resort status but was not allowed to do so because his request was not made 72 hours before the meeting.

“I contacted one of my attorneys, and he called the city attorney, and he said it was a done deal and there was no reason for me to come before the board. They weren’t going to consider anything I had to say,” Sharp said.

“I just never had an opportunity to speak to it, and they won’t let me do it now,” he said. “My biggest problem with this is they have picked and chose who has to shut down and at what time. It’s not fair across the board to everyone who has resort status.”

Belden, his brother Patrick Belden and Sharp were to meet Friday with the board under an executive session item titled “potential litigation” on the meeting’s agenda.

But Flaggs said the suit prevented further discussion on the resort status issue, adding he offered to talk to the Beldens about their situation in executive session “as a matter of courtesy.”

“Since then, I’ve been sued,” he said. “I’m of the opinion that when you’re being sued, you zip it and let the attorney do the work. I will have no further comment on this matter. It’s in the court now.”

The litigation item remained on the agenda so the board could get advice from City Attorney Nancy Thomas.

Sharp, who is leasing the building to David Belden but is not named in the suit, asked for permission to address the board on the resort issue Friday, but Flaggs refused, citing the lawsuit.

After the board went into closed session, Belden said he asked for the Friday meeting and told Flaggs and Mayfield he had filed a motion for an injunction to stop the city from enforcing the 2 a.m. last call.

“They just don’t want to hear what we had to say,” he said.

Belden said the 911 calls the board cited as one of the reasons for closing “were from a year ago. I’ve not been the owner of that business for over a year.”

The Beldens and Sharp met with the board and Police Chief Walter Armstrong a year ago after a fight at the Upper End on top of KJ’s forced city officials to close the bar. It later reopened under an agreement between the parties. Belden did not own the bar at that time.

“Even though some of the same people are involved, there is a new tenant, and many of the complaints about noise came from my downstairs tenant who is no longer there,” Sharp said.

“I think this whole thing has been a tremendous miscommunication on both sides of the issue,” he said. “We were told (after January 2014) the downtown situation had gotten much better, and as far as we knew, everything was fine. Then this comes out of the clear blue. I don’t know where it is coming from, I don’t understand it, because we were told by Chief Armstrong more than once, things were much better downtown.

“We haven’t had direct communication with the mayor and aldermen,” he said, “now we can’t have communication with the board because of the lawsuit, and I hate that, because I do think it can be worked out. We just need to put the cards on the table and work it out.”

“I asked Armstrong what I needed to do to change to help them with stuff, and he told me we were doing better,” Belden. “We were spending almost  $80,000 a year on security, we put cameras up everywhere.”

“Tunica, Greenville, Natchez and the Coast, they all have resort areas to keep it fair for local businesses to compete against the casinos,” Belden said. “Now in this city, you have three people who have decided they don’t want us to be on a fair playing field.  I want downtown to be safe and I want people to come downtown. We’re doing our part with security, making sure we’re not overserving people, and watching the street.”