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DOJ Sides with Church Suing Virginia Governor Northam After Pastor Threatened with Fine, Jail Time For Holding 16-Person Service
Gateway Pundit ^ | 05/03/2020 | Cristina Laila

Posted on 05/03/2020 5:59:34 PM PDT by SeekAndFind

The Justice Department sided with a church suing Virginia Governor Ralph Northam (D) after the pastor was threatened with a fine and jail time for holding a 16-person service on Palm Sunday.

Northam is famous for a posing in KKK-blackface in his college yearbook.

Kevin Wilson, the pastor of Lighthouse Fellowship Church on Chincoteague Island, was threatened with jail time or a $2,000 fine by police for violating Northam’s unconstitutional Coronavirus lockdown order.

A total of 16 people attended the Palm Sunday church service on April 5 and were all spaced far apart from each other in a church that can seat 293 people. The rest stayed home voluntarily.

None of the Democrat tyrants have been able to answer why people can flood into a Walmart and ‘social distance’ but they can’t go to church and sit 6 feet apart from one another.

The pastor sued Governor Northam and accused him of discriminating against the church and violating the First Amendment.

Fox News reported:

_____________________________________________

The Justice Department is siding with a Virginia church suing Gov. Ralph Northam after police threatened a pastor with jail time or a $2,500 fine for violating the state’s coronavirus lockdown restrictions by holding a 16-person church service on Palm Sunday.

“The Commonwealth of Virginia has offered no good reason for refusing to trust congregants who promise to use care in worship in the same way it trusts accountants, lawyers, and other workers to do the same,” the DOJ said in a statement of interest obtained by Fox News on Sunday.

Mat Staver, the chairman and founder of Liberty Counsel, representing the pastor, accused Northam, a Democrat, of discriminating against the church and violating the First Amendment.

“As important as it is that we stay safe during these challenging times, it is also important for states to remember that we do not abandon all of our freedoms in times of emergency,” Matthew Schneider, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, said in a statement. “Unlawful discrimination against people who exercise their right to religion violates the First Amendment, whether we are in a pandemic or not.”

_____________________________________________

Like a true tyrant, Northam believes the authoritarian lockdown orders are only for the peasants.

Northam was reportedly spotted at his beach house in North Carolina’s Outer Banks, violating his own stay-at-home order where only necessary travel was allowed.

In addition to violating his own order, Northam was violating North Carolina’s ‘residents only’ ban where only residents who have proof of North Carolinian residence are being admitted to the Outer Banks and Roanoke Island.

Instead of hunting down pastors for holding church services, the police should go after Northam for violating Coronavirus orders in two different states.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Front Page News; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: North Carolina; US: Virginia
KEYWORDS: church; coronavirus; doj; northam; policestate; ralphnortham; religiousfreedom; shutdown; virginia
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1 posted on 05/03/2020 5:59:34 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

If you can sit on a plane, you can sit in a pew.


2 posted on 05/03/2020 6:04:54 PM PDT by mewzilla (Break out the mustard seeds.)
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To: mewzilla
If you can sit on a plane, you can sit in a pew.

What about wrenches?


3 posted on 05/03/2020 6:06:24 PM PDT by bagster ("Even bad men love their mamas".)
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To: SeekAndFind

Not a day goes by that doesn’t reinforce the notion that the blackface KKK is a Communist lackey of the DNC.


4 posted on 05/03/2020 6:07:51 PM PDT by immadashell (Save Innocent Lives - ban gun free zones)
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To: SeekAndFind
As long as the crisis continues RATs will push their tyrannical agenda. Push back against liberty and individual freedom as long and as far as possible.
5 posted on 05/03/2020 6:14:23 PM PDT by immadashell (Save Innocent Lives - ban gun free zones)
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To: SeekAndFind

Bump!


6 posted on 05/03/2020 6:16:30 PM PDT by Jim Robinson (Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God!)
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To: SeekAndFind

L8r


7 posted on 05/03/2020 6:19:25 PM PDT by preacher ( Journalism no longer reports news, they use news to shape our society.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Punishable by death?


8 posted on 05/03/2020 6:21:48 PM PDT by wastedyears (The left would kill every single one of us and our families if they knew they could get away with it)
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Analytica_data_scandal

 

https://twitter.com/dmills3710/status/1256719668653502465

9 posted on 05/03/2020 6:32:04 PM PDT by ransomnote (IN GOD WE TRUST)
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To: SeekAndFind

Northam must hold the record for stupid. This clown is always in trouble with some agency or group. Maybe he should get some advisers who live on this planet.


10 posted on 05/03/2020 6:46:56 PM PDT by chopperk
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To: bagster

You could sit with a wrench.
It’s best to use the wrench to winch in a wench to sit with. But you know best!


11 posted on 05/03/2020 7:13:42 PM PDT by Reily
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To: Reily
1. If you can sit on a plane, you can sit in a pew.

2. What about wrenches?

3. You could sit with a wrench. It’s best to use the wrench to winch in a wench to sit with. But you know best!

And the correct answer is....


12 posted on 05/03/2020 7:28:45 PM PDT by bagster ("Even bad men love their mamas".)
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To: SeekAndFind

Northam was reportedly spotted at his beach house in North Carolina’s Outer Banks, violating his own stay-at-home order where only necessary travel was allowed.

All these MF Dem governors seem to have 2nd homes which they or their spouses feel free to jet off to while the peasants are told to stay in their hovels and maybe, maybe, if they obey all the rules, the peasants will be allowed out for an hour in the prison yard.


13 posted on 05/03/2020 7:40:36 PM PDT by Flick Lives (The real virus is the MSM)
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To: bagster; Reily

If you can sit in a wrench you must be a nut.


14 posted on 05/03/2020 7:40:46 PM PDT by TigersEye (MAGA - 16 more years! - KAG)
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To: Reily

It’s best to use the wrench to winch in a wench to sit with.

“Come along”, my dear.


15 posted on 05/03/2020 7:43:10 PM PDT by Flick Lives (The real virus is the MSM)
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To: ransomnote

Surveillance cameras aren’t much good if you’re wearing a mask.
All laws against wearing masks in public are moot for the duration of the pandemic.


16 posted on 05/03/2020 7:45:23 PM PDT by TigersEye (MAGA - 16 more years! - KAG)
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To: SeekAndFind
The memo is a roadmap for the state of Virginia to provide argument that will meet DOJ requirements.

II. The Free Exercise Clause Prohibits Unequal Treatment of Religious Individuals and Organizations

C. The United States does not take a position in this Statement on the advisability of in-person gatherings in Virginia or in any of its localities at this time, as the proper response to the COVID-19 pandemic will vary over time depending on facts on the ground. But the Commonwealth cannot treat religious gatherings less favorably than other similar, secular gatherings. To be clear, this principle does not prevent a government from seeking to establish "that mass gatherings at churches [of the sort Lighthouse proposes] pose unique health risks that do not arise" in the context of the activities that the Orders permit. First Baptist Church, 2020 WL 1910021 at *7; see infra Part III. As discussed in Part III, however, the Commonwealth has not yet asserted any such carefully tailored approach, and Lighthouse would be entitled to relief unless the Commonwealth can carry its burden on strict scrutiny. See, e.g., id. at *3 & 7 (holding that "secular facilities that are still exempt from the mass gathering prohibition or that are given more lenient treatment," including "airports, childcare locations, hotels, food pantries and shelters, detoxification centers," "shopping malls," and "office spaces," demonstrated religious targeting that failed strict scrutiny and called for a temporary restraining order against the Kansas Governor's COVID-19 Order). ...

III. The Compelling Interest / Least Restrictive Means Test Is a Searching Inquiry

... strict scrutiny's fundamental purpose is to take `relevant differences' into account."

However, that is not the end of the inquiry. ...

... If, in this fact-intensive and context-laden analysis, the Court determines that there are no "relevant differences," O Centro, 546 U.S. at 431-32, with regard to efficacy in slowing the spread of COVID-19, between allowing the church to meet as proposed and allowing these various preferred gatherings, then the Commonwealth's Orders must yield to the church's sincerely held religious exercise. [find and declare a relevant difference, like singing, time in proximity] At this stage of the case, where the Commonwealth has yet to respond, it is not possible to reach that conclusion.

The court now has the DOJ position to justify a delay for more fact-finding and argument. The parties have been given the legal elements that must be reduced to writing. DOJ cited the very cases it will use to analyze the action of the governor, and has given the governor the formula to avoid further attention.

17 posted on 05/03/2020 8:00:10 PM PDT by Cboldt
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To: TigersEye

You can if you winch in a wench!


18 posted on 05/03/2020 8:21:35 PM PDT by Reily
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To: Flick Lives

But doesn’t that leave the winched wench with a wrench?


19 posted on 05/03/2020 8:24:07 PM PDT by Reily
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To: SeekAndFind

original article stolen lock,stock and barrel by GP:

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/justice-department-virginia-church-suing-northam-coronavirus-pastor-support


20 posted on 05/03/2020 9:05:48 PM PDT by catnipman (Cat Nipman: Vote Republican in 2012 and only be called racist one more time!)
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