Our current crisis has given state and local governments far greater police powers and has resulted in greatly restricted freedom for individuals and civil society.
It was inevitable that this would result in a clash over constitutional rights. And it’s unsurprising that the clash is over religious liberty.
Two local governments have overreached in quashing mass gatherings and have taken action against churches having parking lot services. The churches have sued, and now the U.S. Department of Justice has stepped in on the side of the church.
The Associated Press is making it sound like a standard partisan dispute: “The federal involvement adds to the rising tension over reconciling religious freedom with public health restrictions designed to fight the pandemic, disputes that are playing out along the same partisan lines that mark the nation’s overall divide.”
That’s a really odd characterization, because the case where the Department of Justice stepped in — in which Greenville, Mississippi, issued $500 fines to worshippers who stayed in their cars at a service that was explicitly designed to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
So first, there’s the politics of the case. How can the AP cast this story, in which a Democratic mayor enforced an unclear rule by a GOP governor to issue fines to worshippers unfairly at a black church, as a dispute “playing out along the same partisan lines that mark the nation’s overall divide”?
Then there are the facts of the case: No reasonable concern for health could lead to a policy fining a drive-up-and-stay-in-your-car church service. So if anyone disagrees with Temple Baptist Church or with the Department of Justice, they’ve got quite an argument to make.
The Justice Department grants that governments can, within the bounds of the Constitution, implement rules that might infringe on the free exercise of religion. The Justice Department’s brief cites case law saying “the right to practice religion freely does not include the liberty to expose the community … to communicable disease.”
But, the DOJ adds, sensibly: “If a statute purporting to have been enacted to protect the public health, the public morals, or the public safety, has no real or substantial relation to those objects, or is, beyond all question, a plain, palpable invasion of rights secured by the fundamental law.”
And a law saying you can’t park in the same lot and sit in your car to pray, even when you can park near and even get out and walk around near other people at Home Depot, is not a law tailored to promote public safety. It’s a law tailored to prevent worship.
The Justice Department is right. The officials of Greenville were way off base to issue the tickets, and the governor of Mississippi ought to issue clearer rules
