The First Amendment has all kinds of things

Including freedom of religion. I talk about my latest (not my first) adventure with it, in association with the great Harmeet Dhillon and her Center for American Liberty, in the video embedded in this tweet:

“These are fundamental rights. The #Lawsuit is not only on religious liberty but on the right of #FreeSpeech and free assembly.” – @RonColeman, Lawyer

While places like convenience stores, hardware stores, and liquor stores can have more than 10 people indoors, #churches cannot. pic.twitter.com/L9guS833FG

— NTD News (@news_ntd) May 28, 2020

Here is the complaint:

Here is the brief:

Here is the order to show cause:

And here is the latest (as of Thursday PM) wrangling, which, thank God, went OK for us.

UPDATE: Wheels, grinding slowly:

Here is the transcript on the oral argument on this preliminary hearing:

UPDATE, as of Saturday night an order in a similar, but not the same, case before another New Jersey federal judge denying the State’s motion to consolidate our case with that one, which was opposed by the plaintiffs in that case and would have been opposed by our plaintiffs, too:

This is kind of interesting, too. A motion by Americans United for Separation of Church and State to appear as amicus curiae; our opposition; the court’s denial of the motion, handed down this afternoon, Tuesday, June 9th:

New, Wednesday morning:

The NJ Department of Law, on behalf of @GovMurphy, just emailed EO-152 to @pnjaban and me and inquired whether our clients intend to pursue their claims in our First Amendment lawsuit on behalf of our clergymen clients and churches.https://t.co/9XgXRW2zvb— Ron Coleman (@RonColeman) June 10, 2020

Here’s the order. We are talking about it.

UPDATE: Our clients have determined to proceed with the litigation.

UPDATE, Friday: We filed this yesterday…

And this is the response brief from the State defendants:

And that’s all she — we, they, everyone — wrote. The hearing is Monday morning at 9:30 via Zoom.

UPDATE:

In other news, and update:

The SCOTUS South Bay decision two weeks ago has taken the wind out of any judicial sails inclined to rule in favor of parties challenging state assumptions of emergency powers. Our motion for an injunction was denied.

— Ron Coleman (@RonColeman) June 15, 2020