On Fire Christian Center, Inc. v. Fischer

W.D. Kentucky

On Fire Christian Center, Inc. v. Fischer

DecidedApril 11, 2020

Docket3:20-cv-00264

StatusUnknown

This text of On Fire Christian Center, Inc. v. Fischer (On Fire Christian Center, Inc. v. Fischer) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, W.D. Kentucky primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook

On Fire Christian Center, Inc. v. Fischer, (W.D. Ky. 2020).

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Opinion

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT WESTERN DISTRICT OF KENTUCKY

ON FIRE CHRISTIAN CENTER, INC. PLAINTIFF

v. CIVIL ACTION NO. 3:20-CV-264-JRW

GREG FISCHER, et al. DEFENDANTS

TEMPORARY RESTRAINING ORDER 1. The Court GRANTS the motion for a temporary restraining order filed by On Fire Christian Center, Inc. (“On Fire”) against Mayor Greg Fischer and the City of Louisville (together, “Louisville”). 2. The Court ENTERS this Temporary Restraining Order on Saturday, April 11, 2020 at 2:00 P.M.1 3. The Court ENJOINS Louisville from enforcing; attempting to enforce; threatening to enforce; or otherwise requiring compliance with any prohibition on drive-in church services at On Fire.2 4. Unless the Court enters this Temporary Restraining Order, the members of On Fire will suffer irreparable harm.3 The government plans to substantially burden their religious practice on one of the most important holidays of the Christian calendar, Easter Sunday.4

1 Fed. R. Civ. P. 65(b)(2). 2 As a general rule, a court’s injunction “should be no more burdensome to the defendant than necessary to provide complete relief to the plaintiffs.” Califano v. Yamasaki, 442 U.S. 682, 702 (1979). But Louisville ought not to view the limits of this injunction as a green light to violate the religious liberty of non-parties. Cf. 42 U.S.C. § 1983. 3 Id. 4 DN 1 ¶ 13. 5. Notice to Louisville before entering this Temporary Restraining Order isn’t necessary.” The facts in On Fire’s affidavit “clearly show that immediate and irreparable injury, loss, or damage will result to [On Fire] before [Louisville] may be heard in opposition.” J. Brooken Smith, On Fire’s lawyer, certified that he sent Louisville a letter yesterday detailing their potential claims but didn’t hear anything back.’ 6. The Court issued this Temporary Restraining Order without notice because Easter Sunday is less than one day away.® Providing notice to Louisville before entering this Temporary Restraining Order would be impractical in such a short period of time. 7. On Fire does not need to post a security because enjoining Louisville from prohibiting drive-in church services at On Fire doesn’t interfere with Louisville’s rights.’ 8. The Court GRANTS On Fire’s request for Oral Argument. The Court will hold a telephonic hearing on the preliminary injunction motion on April 14, 2020 at 11:00 A.M. Counsel shall email Ms. Megan Jackson at Megan Jackson@kywd.uscourts.gov for the hearing’s call-in number and access code. Members of the public interested in listening to the hearing may also email Ms. Jackson. 9. The Court ORDERS On Fire’s lawyers to serve a copy of this Temporary Restraining Order and Opinion on Mike O’Connell, Jefferson County Attorney.

ictrichgeebaibag, wistdler bulge United States District Court

8 Cw PGI, wtva0m ® Fed. R. Civ. P. 65(b)(1)(A). 7 Fed. R. Civ. P. 65(b)(1)(B); DN 3-1 #43. 8 Fed. R. Civ. P. 65(b)(2). Fed. R. Civ. P. 65(c).

MEMORANDUM OPINION 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. But two days ago, citing the need for social distancing during the current pandemic, Louisville’s Mayor Greg Fischer ordered Christians not to attend Sunday services, even if they remained in their cars to worship – and even though it’s Easter.

The Mayor’s decision is stunning. And it is, “beyond all reason,” unconstitutional.10 * * * According to St. Paul, the first pilgrim was Abel. With Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Sara, they “died in faith, not having received the promises” of God’s promised kingdom.11 But they saw “them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.”12 The Plymouth Colony’s second Governor, William Bradford, alluded to St. Paul’s pilgrims when he recalled, years later, his fellow colonists’ departure from England. The land they were leaving was comfortable and familiar. The ocean before them was, for them, unknown and dangerous. So too was the New World, where half would not survive the first winter.13 There

10 Cf. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11, 31 (1905). 11 Hebrews 11:13. 12 Id. 13 Patricia Deetz and James Deetz, Mayflower Passenger Deaths, 1620-1621, THE PLYMOUTH COLONY ARCHIVE PROJECT (Dec. 14, 2007), http://www.histarch.illinois.edu/plymouth/Maydeaths.html. were “mutual embraces and many tears,” as they said farewell to sons, daughters, mothers, and fathers, too young or old or fearful or frail to leave the Old World.14 But they sailed west because west was where they would find what they wanted most, what they needed most: the liberty to worship God according to their conscience. “They knew they were pilgrims,” wrote Bradford, “and looked not much on those things” left behind, “but lifted

their eyes to heaven, their dearest country and quieted their spirits.”15 The Pilgrims were heirs to a long line of persecuted Christians, including some punished with prison or worse for the crime of celebrating Easter16 – and an even longer line of persecuted peoples of more ancient faiths.17 And although their notions of tolerance left more than a little to be desired,18 the Pilgrims understood at least this much: No place, not even the unknown, is worse than any place whose state forbids the exercise of your sincerely held religious beliefs. The Pilgrims’ history of fleeing religious persecution was just one of the many “historical instances of religious persecution and intolerance that gave concern to those who drafted the Free

14 WILLIAM BRADFORD, HISTORY OF PLYMOUTH COLONY 60 (Charles Deane, 1948) https://www.google.com/books/edition/History_of_Plymouth_Plantation/tYecOAN1cwwC?hl=e n&gbpv=1&dq=inauthor:%22WILLIAM+BRADFORD%22&printsec=frontcover. 15 Id. at 59 (modernized). 16 Tacitus’ Annals 15:44, available at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Tac.+Ann.+15.44&redirect=true. 17 See, e.g., Exodus 1:11-18. 18 Nathaniel Philbrick, Mayflower 177 (2006) (“It was the Puritans who led the way in persecuting the Quakers, but the Pilgrims were more than willing to follow along. As a Quaker sympathizer acidly wrote, the ‘Plymouth-saddle is on the Bay horse,’ and in 1660 Isaac Robinson, son of the late pastor John Robinson, was dis-enfranchised for advocating a policy of moderation to the Quakers.”). Exercise Clause” of our Constitution’s First Amendment.”19 It provides, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . .”20 At the time of that Amendment’s ratification, religious liberty was among the American experiment’s most audacious guarantees. For millennia, soldiers had fought and killed to impose their religious doctrine on their neighbors. A century before America’s founding, in Germany

alone, religious conflict took the lives of one out of every five men, women, and children.21 But not so in America.

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