A federal judge dismissed a Baton Rouge pastor’s lawsuit for the second time over Gov. John Bel Edwards’ prior COVID-19 restrictions on public gatherings, but recognized that his rights were violated.
U.S. District Judge Brian Jackson dismissed Rev. Tony Spell's lawsuit that sought to block the restrictions due to the fact that restrictions have long expired, along with Spell’s request for damages from state officials.
The lawsuit stems from Spell’s decision to hold service at his Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge in defiance of Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards' COVID-19 public health mandates, the Louisiana Record previously reported.
Spell made national headlines due to his defiance at a time when the state was being ravaged by COVID-19.
Jeffrey Wittenbrink, with Wittenbrink Law Firm in Baton Rouge and Spell's attorney in this case, said that while most people are focusing on the dismissal of the case, they are ignoring the obvious reason why Spell sued in the first place.
“The most important part of the decision, which has not been reported in the media, is that the judge recognized that Pastor Spell’s constitutional rights were violated,” Wittenbrink told the Louisiana Record.
Wittenbrink added that Jackson assumed based on a Fifth Circuit ruling that Pastor Spell had legitimately laid out a cause of action for religious rights under the First Amendment.
“That is the most important part of the decision, all they see is that the case is dismissed,” he said.
Wittenbrink added the case was dismissed on the grounds of qualified immunity.
“Now, qualified immunity is an interesting element, he said. “It allows officers of the law and state office holders to violate your constitutional rights if they don’t have a reasonable right of knowing that your constitutional rights are being violated. It's become a burdensome thing. In fact, recently the Supreme Court actually made a decision on qualified immunity cases. You don’t necessarily have to have a case on point to be able to tell an officer that they should have known that they’ve violating someone’s constitutional rights.”
Wittenbrink said that they planned to appeal the decision.
“If the governor was a constitutional scholar he would have figured out that he was going to violate this guy’s rights,” he said. “The problem with that is this, the Constitution is pretty plainly written, and other governors in other states very clearly looked at it. There was only one other pastor in the United States that was arrested over this stuff and that was a guy in Florida. He was arrested and charged with violating the governor's order and then the governor had the good sense to immediately turn around and say ‘No, we should have listed religion as an essential service as well.’”
There are a lot of people out there that clearly recognize the danger of saying, "Yes, Walmart and Target can stay fully open, but we have to close the churches," Wittenbrink added.
“We will appeal. We have a very friendly Fifth Circuit but we have a very tough law in the area of qualified immunity,” he said. “We think the governor should have known based on the United States Constitution, Louisiana Constitution and the statute that gives him emergency powers that he shall not use anything to diminish any right protected by the Louisiana Constitution, the U.S. Constitution or our Declaration of Rights.”
If the same scenario played out again, Wittenbrink believes that the governor now knows better and he would not mandate that the churches stay closed.
“As soon as we sued the governor, he immediately started changing stuff and that is to his credit,” he said. “(He) immediately changed the rule that limited churches to a percentage and continued to do things more in line with more reasonable restrictions.”
Positive results happened because of the filing of the lawsuit, he added.