Closed but not canceled

Henry Fernandez doesn’t like preaching to an empty room and a camera: “Here I am in this small sanctuary with six people, and I’m trying to ignore the camera and speak normally, and that has been a real challenge for me.”

Though the situation makes him anxious, Fernandez, who pastors Bryce Avenue Presbyterian Church, a Presbyterian Church in America congregation in Los Alamos, N.M., said the decision whether to obey the state’s ban on public gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic was straightforward.

“It was a matter of sheer obedience to the Word of God,” he said, citing the Romans 13 admonition to submit to the governing authorities.

Others have challenged restrictions. Brooklyn, N.Y., lawyer Lee Nigen, a devout Jew, said New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s ban on mass gatherings blocks Jews from group readings of the Torah. His lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court on March 27 claims governmental officials overstepped their bounds in their efforts to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Plaintiffs filed similar suits in Texas, Colorado, and New Hampshire.

These early challenges expose underlying questions about how long the government can circumscribe First Amendment rights—as well as how restrictions may affect ministry in the long term.

“Lawful process matters, and emergency orders of this sort, if left unchallenged, will evolve into precedents with horrifying consequences,” Norm Pattis, Nigen’s attorney, told the New York Post.

A patchwork of federal, state, and local recommendations and directives has arisen in the pandemic. Officials drafted many of the restrictions in haste, sometimes resulting in overbroad or conflicting guidance that left religious communities and individuals unsure about what was allowed.

Local governments in McKinney, Texas; Tampa, Fla.; and Greensboro, N.C., revised initial orders that either failed to define churches as “essential” or lacked clarity about whether they could livestream services. In Tampa, the Hillsborough County Board of County Commissioners met on Thursday and reversed a rule that only days earlier failed to define churches as essential services, the Tampa Bay Times reported. In Greensboro, Guilford County officials initially banned services of any size but later modified their order to allow up to 10 people to gather to livestream worship over the internet. Its FAQ page goes a step further, saying the order forbids services in church parking lots or any travel to a church for worship.

Adding to the confusion, some state government directives overrule local restrictions while other states allow tighter controls at the local level. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a statewide order last Tuesday superseding more restrictive orders in places like Fort Worth and Arlington that shuttered houses of worship.

Most churches have adapted to the unusual circumstances.

“Now is the time for prudence, not defiance,” First Liberty’s Jeremy Dys said in a teleconference on Friday. The special counsel for litigation and communications for the legal group cited Catholic Bishop Ferdinand Brossart of Cincinnati who, during the deadly 1918 flu pandemic, asked parishioners to obey stay-at-home orders and “pray that the impending plague may be averted.”

Meanwhile, many pastors hope the coronavirus pandemic will encourage prayer and other spiritual practices.

“People are more aware of others and their needs and are desiring prayer more,” Fernandez said, adding that the “more marginal in faith and less mature are growing.”

Like many pastors, he’ll adapt. On Easter Sunday, Fernandez will preach again to a nearly empty sanctuary, trusting that the Word he delivers will be heard and bear fruit.

Excluding the religious

The Students for Life club at Georgia Tech filed a lawsuit last week arguing that the university’s student government engaged in unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination when it rejected the group’s application at the beginning of the school year for funds to host pro-life speaker Alveda King, the niece of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. Student overseers grilled applicant Brian Cochran, then the president of Students for Life at the school, about King’s appearance—particularly her positions on abortion and same-sex marriage, the lawsuit states. The student leaders ultimately concluded the group could not use student fees to fund King’s speech because she was “inherently religious” like her uncle.

King became a Christian after having two abortions and has since become a pro-life activist. She has described abortion as a “womb-lynching,” tying her pro-life views to the larger civil rights movement. King also has accused Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, of targeting minority communities.

Cochran, who graduated in December, ended up paying more than $3,000 out of his own pocket for King’s appearance fee. The university rebuffed his requests for reimbursement.

“The Supreme Court made it clear 20 years ago that if public universities wish to force students to pay student activity fees, then those universities have a duty to ensure that the funds are distributed in a viewpoint-neutral manner,” said Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Caleb Dalton, who is representing Cochran and the club.

Many universities have tangled with student groups over the distribution of student activity fees. The University of Colorado settled a lawsuit in April 2019 with Ratio Christi that dealt in part with the use of such funds. —S.W.

Gag order

A major New York City hospital system at the epicenter of the COVID-19 crisis has told its doctors not to talk to the news media about the life-and-death decisions they face.

NYU Langone Health, in a change to long-standing triage policy, gave emergency room doctors at its hospitals “sole discretion” over whether to place patients on ventilators. In a March 28 email, head of emergency medicine Robert Femia threatened to discipline and possibly fire doctors who talked to reporters about the decisions, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education challenged the gag order, calling on the teaching hospitals’ administrators to rescind their threat last week.

“It is precisely in times of crisis that it is most important that lines of communication to the public be open,” FIRE Executive Director Robert Shibley wrote, adding that silencing faculty members could lead to “inhibiting or delaying the release of vital information about the virus, its effects and transmissibility, and potential treatments.” —S.W.

Church ads out

It’s a simple image: a silhouette of three shepherds and sheep, the words “Find the Perfect Gift,” and a Catholic church’s website address. But the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority rejected the advertisement for the sides of its public buses in 2017. Courts ultimately sided with WMATA, accepting its policy of only allowing secular Christmas ads.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case. But Justice Neil Gorsuch, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote that WMATA clearly violated the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and engaged in viewpoint discrimination by opening a public forum for discussion of Christmas and then censoring certain messages.

“Once the government declares Christmas open for commentary, it can hardly turn around and mute religious speech on a subject that so naturally invites it,” Gorsuch wrote. —S.W.

Another delay

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday postponed its April calendar, pushing back oral arguments in Little Sisters of the Poor v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and other cases. The nuns are still fighting to preserve a religious exemption from the Health and Human Services contraceptive and abortifacient mandate. The court said only that it would “consider rescheduling some cases from the March and April sessions before the end of the term if circumstances permit in light of public health and safety guidance at that time.” —S.W.