The Justice Department is siding with a Virginia church suing Gov. Ralph Blackface Northam. Because of his orders, police threatened a pastor with jail time or a $2,500 fine for violating the state’s coronavirus lockdown restrictions. The pastor held a 16-person church service on Palm Sunday.
The DOJ decision came after police in protective garb served a summons to Kevin Wilson, the pastor of Lighthouse Fellowship Church on Chincoteague Island. The service was held on April 5 and the 16 people were spaced far apart from one another in a church that could fit 293 people.
State officials said Wilson and the church violated the Virginia Constitution by breaking state-imposed social distancing restrictions intended to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
Since when can a governor take away the First Amendment and claim it’s in a state constitution?
That caught the DOJ’s eye.
“The Commonwealth of Virginia has offered no good reason for refusing to trust congregants who promise to use care in worship in the same way it trusts accountants, lawyers, and other workers to do the same,” the DOJ said in a statement of interest obtained by Fox News on Sunday.
Mat Staver, the chairman and founder of Liberty Counsel, representing the pastor, accused Northam, a Democrat, of discriminating against the church and violating the First Amendment.
“As important as it is that we stay safe during these challenging times, it is also important for states to remember that we do not abandon all of our freedoms in times of emergency,” Matthew Schneider, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, said in a statement. “Unlawful discrimination against people who exercise their right to religion violates the First Amendment, whether we are in a pandemic or not.”
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These assaults on religious people are out of control.
Attorney General Bill Barr indicated last month that he would address some of the more Draconian rules being pushed [by petty tyrants from their fiefdoms].
“People bring those lawsuits, we’ll take a look at it at that time, and if we think it’s, you know, justified, we would take a position. That’s what we’re doing now. We, you know, we’re looking carefully at a number of these rules that are being put into place,” Barr told Hugh Hewitt on April 21.
How the CPUSA hates religion and family. Government and the comrades are supposed to be your religion and family in the strawberry fields forever people’s collective utopia.
Destroy everything in the Long March Through the Institutions because real communism hasn’t been tried.
Never mind the mountain of skulls that always results in these statist utopia building quests.
I wish we had a real AG that is not an insider. Barr is as worthless as Sessions.
It has taken Barr 3 weeks to cherry pick the easiest case he could find. But, he spent much more on on TV and in other forums playing a leader.
Notice that his irresponsible, oath violating behavior, is reflected in all of his work. In the face of massive evidence, he has done nothing on the set of crimes known as the coup. The same for the Ukraine.
Watch and see how little or nothing he does about universities and federal agencies cooperating with China on the virus research.
We have millions of people in the USA who cannot freely live and this coward sits on it. He’s worried more about the media than our rights.