Just when I started hoping we would get through the coronavirus crisis without anyone legitimately having their First Amendment rights violated by the government, examples of such infringements started popping up around the country. To date, I’ve only counted a handful of instances, but there’s already at least one lawsuit filed charging a local government with violating the free exercise rights of a local church and church pastor in Mississippi.
Last week, several police officers stormed the site of Greenville’s Temple Baptist Church, where they were having a drive-in service and fined each person in attendance $500. Pastor Arthur Scott organized for his congregation to have a drive-in service that meant everyone stayed inside their cars with the windows rolled up while listening to the music and sermon through the radio, just like the experience of a drive-in movie theater.
This is a video from Pastor Hamilton in Greenville, MS.
His Church tried the “drive-in” method of holding services & were targeted by police due to the Democrat Mayor issuing an order prohibiting such services.
This is completely unconstitutional. pic.twitter.com/kZmUXKvTZe
— Mike Coudrey (@MichaelCoudrey) April 12, 2020
The Alliance Defending Freedom filed a lawsuit late last week representing Scott and Temple Baptist challenging Mayor Errick Simmons’s executive order last Tuesday that banned such services. The governor’s orders do not institute such a ban. The complaint alleges that “the City’s church-closure order violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.”
“Government is clearly overstepping its authority when it singles out churches for punishment, especially in a ridiculous fashion like this,” Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel Ryan Tucker said. “In Greenville, you can be in your car at a drive-in restaurant, but you can’t be in your car at a drive-in church service. That’s not only nonsensical, it’s unconstitutional, too.”
Personally, I think drive-in services that attract 20 members of a congregation, as this one did, seem a bit silly when a churchgoer could stay home and still receive biblical encouragement from their pastor, or a pastor, online (if this pastor has no way of facilitating such a service). However, that’s not really the point when it comes to First Amendment violations.
Because the governor did not ban drive-in services, and the city did not ban all drive-in services equally, broadly, across the board, this does seem to be an example of targeting a church and churchgoers. If the Sonic drive-in is still operating down the road, a church drive-in should be allowed to just the same. Faith and the ability to practice one’s belief is not only an essential aspect of coping, but it is protected by this nation’s core principles.
While there are a couple of similar situations in Kentucky and Kansas, I hope this is limited to a handful of local government officials getting their 15 seconds of authoritarianism out of their system. It’s not only unconstitutional, but such abuses of power are an unnecessary source of stress and anxiety for religious people just trying to get through the coronavirus crisis like everyone else.
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
