Bar owners and smokers alike can continue to huff and puff about the indoor smoking ban, but they'll have to do so outside.

Lancaster County District Judge Jodi Nelson on Wednesday denied a pool hall's request for a restraining order against the Nebraska Clean Indoor Air Act, which went into effect June 1.

Attorney Theodore Boecker Jr., who represents Big John Billiards Inc., claimed in a lawsuit filed in May against the state of Nebraska that the law was unconstitutional.

The act bans smoking inside all public buildings and private businesses, save for certain hotel/motel rooms and suites, laboratories, tobacco retail outlets and cigar bars.

Boecker argued in the lawsuit that the cigar bar exemption favored certain businesses with longtime tobacco ties while harming others like, for instance, the traditionally "smoke-filled pool hall." He said the court should strike down the entire ban and let Big John's operate as it normally did prior to June 1.

Big John's Billiards in Omaha was exempt from the city's smoking ban until 2011 because it is also a Keno outlet.

Nelson has not ruled on the request to strike down the entire ban, but wrote in her order filed June 22 that Big John's Billiards failed to meet the burden of proof to temporarily suspend the Nebraska Clean Indoor Air Act.

Big John's has two locations - one in Lincoln and one in Omaha.

Reach Cory Matteson at 473-7438 or cmatteson@journalstar.com.