ASPEN, CO – Black conservative media voice Candace Owens was denied service at Aspen Laboratories Suzanna Lee after Lee told her she was not welcome because of who she is and what she says.
“Holy crap!! I just received an e-mail from a Covid testing facility that they are REFUSING to administer a test to me because they don’t like my politics,” Owens said.
Lee said she denied Owens service because she felt the conservative speaker was, “proactively working to make this pandemic worse by spread misinformation.”
Owens wanted to take the COVID-19 test before a local event she was participating in.
Lee said she often does not pay her workers to keep them and her community protected.
“My team and myself have worked overtime, to exhaustion, unpaid and underpaid this past year, spending our own capital to ensure our community remains protected,” Lee said. “It would be unfair to them and to the sacrifices we have made all this year to serve you.”
“Nothing screams ‘I love my community’ quite like refusing to test people who are going to a local event and wish to ensure they are negative and therefore do not spread the virus,” Owens wrote.
Owens later claimed the laboratory receives federal funding.
“It turns out the facility that rejected my ability to take a Covid test receives both state and federal funding. So no— she had NO RIGHT to deny me a covid test when my taxes go toward her operations This situation is currently being escalated to the HHS,” she said.
The company later testified that it has not received any government funding for its operation.
“She is a private business owner,” Owens said in an interview with the Aspen Times. “She does have a right to decline to give me service, and that’s not what the issue is here. I want that to be very clear. Assuming that she has not accepted any state or federal funding, assuming that she truly is a private business owner, then she has every right to discriminate against who she serves. But it should be noted that she was seeking to prevent me from keeping the Aspen community safe.”