A federal appeals court last month affirmed the dismissal of the Rev. Tony Spell’s lawsuit against Gov. John Bel Edwards and his stay-at-home order issued at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Fifth District Court of Appeals said in a Feb. 17 opinion that Spell, the pastor of Life Tabernacle Church in Central, La., could not prevail in the legal theory he advanced in the case, though the court provided an avenue to restart the case in state court.
“The district court dismissed the claims for damages on grounds of qualified immunity, dismissed the claims for injunctive relief as moot, and dismissed the supplemental state law claims,” the court said. The justices agreed with the federal district court on all those claims.
Defendants in the case were the governor, Central Chief of Police Roger Corcoran and East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff Sid Gautreaux. The law enforcement officials enforced Edwards’ stay-at-home order against Spell, who decided to hold church services despite the restriction.
Jeffrey Wittenbrink, one of Spell’s attorneys, told the Louisiana Record that Spell would make an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on the ground that religious assembly was beyond the purview of government actions.
“Basically, in a free country, the government should trust church people to be church people and have common sense,” Wittenbrink said.
He also noted that the federal district court dismissed the lawsuit’s state law claims without prejudice.
“What that means is we have a state court suit that’s presently pending and that we are reactivating probably in the coming weeks.” Wittenbrink said. “... We’ve still got a very viable lawsuit against the governor, sheriff and the chief of police.”
The appeals court emphasized that the lower court found the issue of whether the state constitution shields Spell from the governor’s crowd-size decree was a novel question of state law.
The court said Spell could not prevail on the legal theory his attorneys advanced before the justices – one that argued church assembly issues cannot be challenged by government.
“Pastor Spell explicitly waived the argument that defendants’ actions violated his constitutional rights under current free-exercise jurisprudence, and so we do not address that argument,” the court’s opinion says.