A growing number of churches are suing governors’ bans on in-person church services after the Department of Justice filed a statement on Sunday supporting a Virginia church attempting to resume such services.
On Wednesday, two churches filed complaints against their respective governors. In Maine, Calvary Chapel alleged that Democratic Gov. Janet Mills’s order restricting religious gatherings to 10 people violated the First Amendment’s freedom of religion and assembly clauses.
The suit was filed by Liberty Counsel, a legal nonprofit organization whose co-founder Mat Staver told the Washington Examiner that he considers all bans on church services “unconstitutional.” In the complaint, the group makes the argument that governments do not have the authority to limit religious freedoms during a pandemic.
“As is often true in times of crisis, Calvary Chapel respectfully submits that in an effort to uphold her sworn duties Gov. Mills has stepped over a line the Constitution does not permit,” Calvary’s complaint said. “Because of that, Calvary Chapel brings this action to ensure that this court safeguards the cherished liberties for which so many have fought and died.”
Calvary has been holding drive-in services up to this point, but its pastor, Ken Graves, announced during a Sunday service that the church is moving toward in-person as well as drive-in services in an attempt to ease back into normalcy.
A Kentucky church on Wednesday filed a similar suit, alleging that Gov. Andy Beshear’s ban on in-person services was unconstitutional and stating that allowing drive-in services is not enough for true religious assembly. The church, Tabernacle Baptist, is represented by the First Liberty Institute, a legal nonprofit organization that has represented several drive-in cases in the past month.
“Tabernacle has a sincerely-held religious belief that online services and drive-in services do not meet the Lord’s requirement that the church meet together in person for corporate worship,” the complaint read. “Tabernacle also believes that online and drive-in church services are not substitutes for real in-person corporate worship.”
In both lawsuits, the churches ask for temporary restraining orders on the bans, expressing concerns that they will face criminal penalties otherwise.
Arguments among religious freedom advocates for in-person services have become more pronounced as several states have begun the process of opening up. The Justice Department’s Sunday statement argued that unless governors can show that continuing to keep churches under lockdown is part of a generally applicable order to pursue their “compelling interest” of ensuring public health, they are likely violating the First Amendment.
In the case of the Virginia church, the Justice Department said, Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam cannot apply an unequal standard that trusts people to social distance at stores and in other businesses but does not trust people to social distance during a church service.
“It will be difficult for the Commonwealth to justify having one set of rules that allows for secular gatherings — such as in-person operations for any non-retail business and various other exemptions permitting large-scale retail gatherings — while denying to Lighthouse the ability to worship in modest numbers with appropriate social distancing and sanitizing precautions,” the statement read.
The Justice Department’s statement came days after an Illinois church sued Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker for extending a ban on in-church services through May. Following the suit, Pritzker changed the limit from zero to 10. The church is demanding that Pritzker lift the restrictions entirely.
Attorney General William Barr filed a statement of interest in March supporting a Mississippi church that was suing for the right to hold drive-in services. After Barr’s statement, many judges decided in favor of churches making similar cases.
