A federal judge has granted a temporary restraining order filed by a church against Mayor Greg Fischer of Louisville, Kentucky, to allow drive-in services on Easter Sunday.
On Fire Christian Church, which is located in Louisville, filed the suit on Friday, “seeking to block” the mayor’s “prohibition on churches holding drive-in services during the COVID-19 pandemic,” according to the First Liberty Institute, which filed the lawsuit on the church’s behalf.
Judge Justin Walker granted the order Saturday, which prevents the city from “enforcing; attempting to enforce; threatening to enforce; or otherwise requiring compliance with any prohibition on drive-in church services at On Fire,” according to court documents.
The judge went on to label Fischer’s decision “stunning” and “beyond all reason, unconstitutional,” according to WDRB. “On Holy Thursday, an American mayor criminalized the communal celebration of Easter. That sentence is one that this Court never expected to see outside the pages of a dystopian novel, or perhaps the pages of ‘The Onion,'” he added.
“Judge Walker recognized that the mayor’s prohibition of drive-in church services on Easter violated the church’s religious freedom,” Roger Byron, senior counsel at First Liberty, said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “The church will conduct the Easter drive-in service tomorrow with grateful hearts and in full compliance with the CDC’s guidelines.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell praised the ruling on social media shortly after it was announced.
“Grateful for this strong, eloquent ruling defending Kentuckians’ religious liberty from Judge Justin Walker, @POTUS’s outstanding nominee for the D.C. Circuit,” he tweeted. “Of course church parking lots cannot be singled out with unfair standards that differ from other establishments.”
Grateful for this strong, eloquent ruling defending Kentuckians’ religious liberty from Judge Justin Walker, @POTUS’s outstanding nominee for the D.C. Circuit. Of course church parking lots cannot be singled out with unfair standards that differ from other establishments. https://t.co/uS0V9lJ2uX
— Leader McConnell (@senatemajldr) April 11, 2020
The church had been hosting drive-in sermons for weeks amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Earlier in the week, Fischer said that he can’t allow “hundreds of thousands” of people to drive around town this weekend in observance of Easter festivities because “the virus doesn’t take a day off.”
“Our job is to deny the virus. If we don’t do that, more lives will be lost,” he added. “I know it’s tough … I just can’t allow (drive-thru church services) to happen.”
The mayor, days later, then announced that the Louisville Metro Police Department would attend known church gatherings on Easter Sunday to collect license plate information of those in attendance so that the health department can then follow up with them to inquire about whom they’ve been in contact with.
“We’re continuing to talk to these folks and ask them not to do that, to please reconsider,” Fischer said. “If there are gatherings on Sunday, Louisville Metro Police Department will be there on Sunday handing out information detailing the health risks involved, and I have asked LMPD to record license plates of all vehicles in attendance. We will share that information with our public health department, so they can follow up with the individuals that are out in church and gathering in groups, which is clearly a very, very unsafe practice.”
The situation regarding the lawfulness of attending church, either in-person or via drive-in, has popped up in numerous states were government officials have banned public gatherings. A Louisiana pastor named Tony Bell was arrested for holding services in spite of orders from the government to cease holding services last month, and a pastor in Mississippi got into a verbal altercation with local police on Easter weekend.
