{"id":94644,"date":"2023-07-23T16:35:55","date_gmt":"2023-07-23T21:35:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=94644"},"modified":"2023-07-23T16:35:55","modified_gmt":"2023-07-23T21:35:55","slug":"94644","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=94644","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Christians Arrested For Outdoor Church Service During COVID-19 Win $300,000 Lawsuit.<\/a><\/p>\n

A primarily liberal college town in Idaho has agreed to pay $300,000 to three Christian churchgoers who sued the city after being imprisoned for failing to wear face masks or maintain social distance measures at an outdoor service during the peak of the COVID-19 outbreak.<\/p>\n

The city of Moscow, Idaho, announced this week that it would settle the lawsuit with Gabriel Rench and Sean and Rachel Bohnet, who filed a case against city officials in March 2021.<\/p>\n

They asserted that their rights under the First and Fourth Amendments were violated when they were arrested at an outdoor \u201cpsalm sing\u201d led by church leaders in September 2020.<\/p>\n

Moscow, Idaho, is a community of around 25,000 inhabitants located approximately 80 miles south of Spokane, Washington. The church named in the lawsuit, Christ Church, is a small congregation of about 1,000 members that is part of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches.<\/p>\n

At the time of the incident, Officers took Rench\u2019s hymn book before hauling him away in handcuffs to the county jail, where he and others were kept for several hours, according to video of the arrests, which went viral and was blasted at the time on the Twitter platform.<\/p>\n

The calm worship service lasted only 20 minutes in front of Moscow City Hall, where local authorities had put little yellow dots six feet apart to guide participants in COVID-19 6-feet-apart social distancing.<\/p>\n

Rench and the other two were accused of breaching the city\u2019s periodically amended health law. However, a\u00a0magistrate court later dropped the city\u2019s case against them.<\/p>\n

U.S. District Court Judge Morrison C. England, Jr., noted that the \u201cplaintiffs should never have been arrested in the first place,<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cSomehow, every single city official involved overlooked the exclusionary language [of constitutionally protected behavior] in the Ordinance,\u201d the judge wrote.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rench said that the situation in Moscow could be described as a sort of \u201cmicrocosm\u201d of concerns occurring throughout the country and overseas.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s no secret that portions of our government and political groups are now starting to target Christians in a way that has never really happened in America or [even] Canada,\u201d he said, referencing the pastors who have been jailed in neighboring Canada recently for holding church services.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m in a conservative state, but I live in a liberal town, and the liberals had no problem arresting me for practicing my religious rights and my Constitutional rights,\u201d Rench said. \u201cBut my [Republican] governor also didn\u2019t defend me either. If you look at what\u2019s going on in Canada, I think America\u2019s 10 years, at most 20 years, behind Canada if we don\u2019t make significant changes.\u201d<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One thing that Rench said he learned from the whole incident is that \u201chardened\u201d political leaders cannot be expected to modify their mental processes or political ideals.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat needs to happen is the people need to change how they vote and disincentivize the targeting of Christians and those who are genuinely trying to defend the Constitution,\u201d he maintained. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cUnder the terms of the settlement agreement, ICRMP will pay a total settlement amount of $300,000 and all claims against the City and the named City employees will be dismissed with prejudice along with a release of all liability,\u201d the release said, including that the settlement will \u201cprovide(s) closure of a matter related to the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic and the City\u2019s efforts to protect the public during an exceptionally trying time.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christians Arrested For Outdoor Church Service During COVID-19 Win $300,000 Lawsuit. A primarily liberal college town in Idaho has agreed to pay $300,000 to three Christian churchgoers who sued the city after being imprisoned for failing to wear face masks or maintain social distance measures at an outdoor service during the peak of the COVID-19 … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,86,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-courts","category-just-desserts","category-scratch-a-lib-find-a-tyrant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=94644"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94645,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94644\/revisions\/94645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=94644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=94644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=94644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}