New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio have taken a hard line on people gathering for religious purposes while cheering on protests for the last two weeks. Some people have had it with the double standard.
Now a coalition of Catholic priests and Orthodox Jews has launched a lawsuit.
Lee Brown and Tamar Lapin report at the New York Post:
De Blasio, Cuomo sued by priests, Orthodox Jews for banning serviceTwo Catholic priests and a trio of Orthodox Jews are suing Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo — accusing them of an “unprecedented abuse of power” in shuttering houses of worship while supporting mass protests.Upstate priests Rev. Steven Soos and Rev. Nicholas Stamos and Brooklyn Jewish congregants Elchanan Perr, Daniel Schonborn and Mayer Mayerfeld filed a federal lawsuit last week arguing New York’s leaders “exploited the COVID-19 pandemic” to create “a veritable dictatorship” with their lockdown rules.“These orders, both the emergency stay-home and reopening plan declarations, clearly discriminate against houses of worship,” their attorney, Christopher Ferrara, said in a statement. “They are illegally content-based, elaborate, arbitrary and pseudo-scientific.”New York Attorney General Letitia James is also named in the suit for helping to enforce the rules, which the lawsuit says have been “exposed as a sham.”
Mary Margaret Olohan of the Daily Caller has more on this:
“It is time to end New York’s experiment in absolute monarchy,” said Thomas More Society Special Counsel Christopher Ferrara in a statement provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “We are asking the court to put an end to these unconstitutional executive orders and their prejudicial enforcement.”The Thomas More Society’s complaint lists a number of alleged abuses of power, accusing the defendants of exploiting the pandemic to create “a veritable dictatorship” through Cuomo’s executive orders, of selectively enforcing social distancing through fines and punishments, and more.The lawsuit accuses Cuomo, de Blasio, and James of infringing on freedoms of religion, speech, assembly, expressive association, and due process, according to a press release from the Thomas More Society, and Senior Judge Gary L. Sharpe has ordered the defendants to file a response by noon on June 15…“The governor and his agents, along with New York City’s mayor have employed favoritism and political platforms against people of faith,” Ferrara added. “Why is a large worship gathering deemed more dangerous than a mass protest, full of shouting, arm-waving people in close proximity to one another?”
Two days ago, there was a massive protest in Brooklyn for Black Trans Lives Matter:
Yesterday, the gates of a park in a Jewish neighborhood were welded shut:
Members of the community responded with a bolt cutter:
People of faith should just reopen their houses of worship and dare the authorities to shut them down.
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