On Friday, the Department of Justice filed a statement of interest supporting a Washington church suing Mayor Muriel Bowser for worship restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic.
The church, Capitol Hill Baptist, alleged that Bowser violated the free speech and free exercise clauses of the First Amendment, as well as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, by limiting church services, indoors and out, to 100 people while allowing outdoor protests to proceed uninhibited since May.
“We are a nation dedicated to freedom of conscience and freedom of expression. The District of Columbia has, unfortunately, neglected these rights,” said Eric Dreiband, the official leading Attorney General William Barr’s investigation of religious freedom during the pandemic.
Capitol Hill Baptist, which has about 850 members, sued the city after it was denied a permit to hold outdoor services with more than 100 people present. In its brief, the Justice Department backed the church’s claim that it has been subject to unequal treatment by the city and that Bowser’s restrictions have placed a “substantial burden” on the free exercise of religion.
The church is the first in the city to sue on First Amendment grounds.
The intervention is the latest in a long line of comments from the Justice Department since Barr began an investigation of state and local governments’ restrictions on churches in April. As many governors began announcing pandemic restrictions, Barr called restrictions on churches “draconian measures.”
Barr’s intervention in California, Nevada, Virginia, and other states precipitated a demand from President Trump at the end of May that all churches be allowed to reopen their doors.
Barr stirred controversy in September when he said that, in terms of scale, coronavirus lockdowns are the “greatest intrusion of civil liberties” in the United States since slavery.
