Indiana’s attorney general is warning Indianapolis city leaders they may be violating people’s rights as the city starts to reopen from a coronavirus shutdown.
Indy Mayor Joe Hogsett is allowing churches to have services again starting today, but only with 25 people or less. Attorney General Curtis Hill says that benchmark is not being required of by other essential and non-essential businesses, which can open at 50-percent capacity.
“The Supreme Court of the United States has made clear that the First Amendment prohibits the government from singling out people for disfavored treatment because they are religious,” Hill said in a letter to Hogsett and Marion County Health Director Dr. Virginia Caine.
“Additionally, Indiana law prohibits the government from limiting the free exercise of religion by anything other than the least-restrictive means necessary to achieve the government’s compelling interest.”
Hill said the city must treat places of worship the same as non-religious entities. He added that he understands this is a difficult time during which many people may have to make sacrifices to keep other people safe. But he said in the end the government must respect a person’s civil rights “to be free from unlawful discrimination, including with respect to the free exercise of religion.”
The Office of Mayor Joe Hogsett has responded to Hill’s assertion saying:
“We do not believe the public-health order discriminates against religious exercise. Instead, its restriction on gathering size is a rule of general applicability regulating any public gatherings.”
“Dr. Caine’s order reasonably concludes that entities that gather people together for the purposes of in-person interaction pose a greater communicable disease threat than retail stores that one enters to make a purchase and leave. Indeed, the state’s own orders have, until quite recently, consistently created the same distinction”
