Why It’s Unconstitutional To Keep Grocery Stores Open While Closing Churches

[mystery-ak]

 Why It’s Unconstitutional To Keep Grocery Stores Open While Closing Churches

It’s a dangerous precedent that government could consider itself the arbiter of private essential services.

By Jenna Ellis
April 6, 2020

In response to the Wuhan coronavirus, state governors and local leaders have issued wide-ranging executive orders requiring closure of “non-essential” businesses. This affects churches, including imposing criminal penalties for noncompliance in some instances. Some churches have pushed back by simply holding mass services anyway, and several pastors — most prominently in Florida and Louisiana — have been criminally charged.

Many people are wondering, how is this America? Is this constitutionally sound when we have First Amendment protection?

more
https://thefederalist.com/2020/04/06/why-its-unconstitutional-to-keep-grocery-stores-open-while-closing-churches/

[Chosen Daughter]

If they were testing how easily we give up our Constitutional rights we lose.

[LilLamb]

Why It’s Unconstitutional To Keep Grocery Stores Open While Closing Churches

It’s a dangerous precedent that government could consider itself the arbiter of private essential services.

By Jenna Ellis
April 6, 2020

In response to the Wuhan coronavirus, state governors and local leaders have issued wide-ranging executive orders requiring closure of “non-essential” businesses. This affects churches, including imposing criminal penalties for noncompliance in some instances. Some churches have pushed back by simply holding mass services anyway, and several pastors — most prominently in Florida and Louisiana — have been criminally charged.

Many people are wondering, how is this America? Is this constitutionally sound when we have First Amendment protection?

more
https://thefederalist.com/2020/04/06/why-its-unconstitutional-to-keep-grocery-stores-open-while-closing-churches/

Our rights are always been weighed against the greater good. As in you can’t yell, “Fire!” in a crowded theater. People have to be able to get food, but church services can go on on the Internet. I see both sides of the argument and I think in hot zones it’s not outrageous to close down churches.

[Polly Ticks]

Government can determine essential versus non-essential workers within its own employees in the context of a shutdown, which we saw as recently as last year. But there is no constitutional authority on the federal or state level that allows government to subjectively determine who and what is essential for private workers, including during a national health emergency.

Good article.

[Neverdul]

Our rights are always been weighed against the greater good. As in you can’t yell, “Fire!” in a crowded theater. People have to be able to get food, but church services can go on on the Internet. I see both sides of the argument and I think in hot zones it’s not outrageous to close down churches.

As I pointed out on a previous tread, churches and synagogues were ordered closed in, not all, but many cities and towns during the 1918-19 Spanish flu pandemic. Other businesses like bars, restaurants, theaters etc. were ordered closed and some factories were ordered to stagger shifts. There were also in many places limits on the size of any public gatherings, and public transportation like street cars were either stopped or limited.  In addition, many areas made it mandatory to wear face masks in public along with fines or possible arrest for not complying, although the gauze masks probably weren’t of much use.

[mountaineer]

Has anyone noticed whether people continue to gather in mosques, or are they complying with the stay-at-home orders?

[mountaineer]

I found this online, Guidance for Churches and Religious Institutions Facing Coronavirus Restrictions on Gathering, from First Liberty, a legal organization "dedicated exclusively to defending religious liberty for all Americans." Feel free to print it and give it to your church leaders.

It notes that temporary, evenly applied restrictions may be permissible, so long as the government is not treating religious institutions unfairly compared to how it treats other comparable gatherings, e.g., theatres, concerts, sporting events. Permanent restrictions - as threatened by Mayor de Wilhelm de Blasio - probably violate the First Amendment.

[Fishrrman]

Any priest, reverend, rabbi or preacher that did not immediately close the doors to his church/synagogue as soon as the dangers and communicability of this disease became public --and tell his flock to stay home for their own good and their own health -- has judgement so poor that I would not regard his teachin's or preachin's to be worth listening to.