Showing posts with label Capitol insurrection. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Capitol insurrection. Show all posts

Friday, April 02, 2021

Minister Sues To Hold Good Friday Vigil On U.S. Capitol Grounds

On Tuesday, a complaint was filed in D.C. federal district court by a Presbyterian minister who wants to host a prayer vigil on theWestern Terrace of the U.S. Capitol for Good Friday, as he did in 2020.  He was refused a permit because the Capitol grounds have been fenced off since the January 6 attack on the Capitol.  Plaintiff alleges that the denial of a permit violates his free speech, freedom of assembly, free exercise and other rights.  The complaint (full text) in Mahoney v. Pelosi, (D DC, filed 3/30/2021), alleges in part:

In closing the sidewalks and public areas around the Capitol, including the Lower Western Terrace Plaintiff seeks to utilize, Defendants have effectively created a no-speech zone around the nations Capitol. Defendants prevent any First Amendment activities on/in these areas, even though no specific threat to the Capitol has been identified in justification....

Defendants’ restrictions have specifically and explicitly targeted Plaintiff’s religious and “faith based” service and are thus not neutral on their face. Defendants have prohibited Plaintiff’s religious gathering while exempting a laundry list of other activities that occur at the Capitol, including media events, non-religious public gatherings, and various political and other events.

Fox News reports on the lawsuit. [Thanks to Scott Mange for the lead.]

Tuesday, February 09, 2021

Court Orders Religious Dietary Accommodation For Capitol Riot Shaman

On Jan. 9, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that  Jacob Anthony Chansley was one of three men charged in connection with the the invasion of the Capitol building on Jan. 6. According to the DOJ release:

... Chansley was identified as the man seen in media coverage who entered the Capitol building dressed in horns, a bearskin headdress, red, white and blue face paint, shirtless, and tan pants. This individual carried a spear, approximately 6 feet in length, with an American flag tied just below the blade.

By late January, Chansley was held in custody in the D.C. jail where he filed a request for a religious dietary accommodation. He sought a diet of only organic food because he is a Shamanic practitioner. When the request was denied, Chansley filed an emergency motion in the D.C. federal district court.  In United States v. Chansley, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 22788 (D DC, Feb. 3, 2021), the court handed down a lengthy opinion ordering the dietary accommodation, saying in part that:

... RLUIPA and the First Amendment provide prisoners with powerful mechanisms to challenge aspects of their confinement that substantially burden religious free exercise....

Ordinarily ... Free Exercise challenges to neutral and generally applicable laws post-Smith merit only rational basis review, under which the DOC's dietary rules would be presumptively valid. But the Court finds that Smith does not govern the present inquiry for two independent reasons. First, unlike the neutral and generally applicable drug law at issue in Smith itself, the DOC's decision to deny defendant a dietary religious exemption is more akin to an "individualized governmental assessment" of his religious conduct....

Second, Smith is inapposite because the DOC's policy is neither neutral nor generally applicable.... [T]he DOC provides dietary religious exemptions for both Muslim and Jewish inmates. Its sole rationale for withholding an analogous accommodation for defendant is that his religious views lack "religious merit." But that derisive language simply underscores the fact that not only is the DOC withholding a religious exemption for defendant that it already grants to other religious prisoners, but that it is doing so simply because defendant belongs to a disfavored sect....

Third, defendant has shown that the DOC's refusal to provide him with an all-organic diet is a substantial burden—both subjectively and objectively—to his religious beliefs....

Apparently the D.C. jail was unable to comply with the court's order, and Chansley was transferred to another federal facility that could comply. (See Court's Memorandum of Feb. 4, 2021). ABC11 reports on developments.