Pastors sue governor over restrictions
‘The big issue is: what is important in our society and what does our governor view as important in our society?’
Two Rappahannock County pastors, including Rev. Jon C. Heddleston, are suing Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam in Rappahannock County Circuit Court over one of his COVID-19 orders.
Two Rappahannock County pastors are suing Virginia Governor Ralph Northam in Rappahannock County Circuit Court alleging that Executive Order 72 “re ects the Governor’s bias and belief that employers and educational leaders are to be trusted and church leaders are not.”
Executive Order 72, issued on Dec. 13, 2020, enacted temporary “commonsense surge restrictions” to help curb the spread of COVID-19. Virginians were asked to follow the “modi ed stay at home order” and businesses were required to adhere to industry-speci c restrictions.
But clergymen in Culpeper, Madison and now Rappahannock are arguing that the restrictions on churches exceed the governor’s authority and infringe on their religious freedoms because restrictions are greater on churches than on entities like grocery stores, banks and even law enforcement.
“The big issue is: what is important in our society and what does our governor view as important in our society?” said Culpeper attorney J. Michael Sharman, who is representing the Rappahannock pastors in the case.
“When [the governor has] declared as a matter of an executive order that all of these places [have] no restrictions [and] are more important than churches, or are more trustworthy than churches, then we have a serious cultural problem.”
One of the plainti s, Reverend Jon C. Heddleston of Reynolds Memorial Baptist Church, is quoted in last week’s press release as saying: “The Constitution clearly addresses the harms inherent in thwarting men and women from any of these roles for the betterment of our citizenry. Freedom of the press, of religious and creative expression are all foundational to the vocations in which I have been blessed to participate. Restrictions regarding the free assembly of citizens engaged in such useful endeavors is unacceptable in light of our American laws and heritage.”
Heddleston is joined in the suit by Je Light, pastor at Novum Baptist Church in Reva and a team leader for a mobile food pantry.
“The Governor has determined our church to be a ‘non-essential’ function of society, but he considers the food distribution that I do to be ‘essential’ and thus exempt from the requirements of the Order,” Light said.
Sharman is bringing similar cases before circuit courts in Culpeper and
Madison counties, representing more than half a dozen religious leaders in the region including the Rappahannock pastors. In an interview with the Rappahannock News, Sharman readily acknowledged that legal precedent allows the government to “restrict religious operations in order to do their compelling interest.”
Sharman and his clients do not dispute that public health is a compelling interest. “The argument we’re getting into is that the governor has had the US Supreme Court and the Virginia Supreme Court over and over and over say that in these cases in which the government seeks to restrict churches they have to do it in the least restrictive means possible,” he said.
When asked if it would be fair for equal restrictions to be placed on secular entities, Sharman said that it might be fair but it wouldn’t be wise.
“What would be fair and wise would be to [give] churches the same least restrictive means to comply or be safe as the governor has put on himself and government and media — or pet and feed stores, or banks, or retail or beer, wine and liquor stores,” Sharman said.
A court date has not been set for the hearing in Rappahannock. Sharman will present his rst argument on behalf of churchgoers in Culpeper Circuit Court on Feb. 11.