New Virginia Law Is a Victory for Religious Liberty, Supporters Say

By tying places of worship to many” essential businesses ,” a new act recently signed into law in Virginia may stop religious rights violations from occurring again, similar to the closure of churches during COVID lockdowns. Companies like Costco and Target will be permitted to remain open under the new law, and so will regions of spiritual worship.

This year, Governor Glenn Youngkin signed HB 2171, which forbids proposed Virginia governors from issuing any crisis orders that close places of worship while keeping some businesses available.

According to Alliance Defending Freedom Legal Counsel Greg Chafuen, this act is a good first step toward making sure that First Amendment rights are neither violated going forward.

The First Amendment forbids the public from treating temples worse than buying offices, restaurants, or trainers, despite the fact that people authorities have the power and duty to safeguard public health and safety, according to Chafuen in a written statement.

Chafuen continued,” This bill takes the modest part of ensuring that authorities cannot discriminate against religious operations in temples and other places of worship during a public problems.”

Del. The bill’s sponsor, a Republican named Wren Williams, said he had to be very cautious with the way the bill was written to ensure that it would be approved by the Senate, which was controlled by Democrats.

On March 15, he told The Enterprise,” I was able to just get creative with the word because that’s what we have to do about here.”

Williams stated during a February Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that” basically, we’re tethering places, places of worship to other important or critical companies.”

William’s proposal was written in response to the protracted lockdowns and executive actions the rulers took to halt normal religious worship.

The fact that I and the residents of my district were unable to attend church and company at the time really upset me, and that is why this proposal was created, he said.

The Family Foundation referred to the law as a” victory” for the restrained government and the First Amendment.

By signing a measure( SB 254 ) into law in the middle of 2022, Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis was one of the first governors to define houses of worship as” essential services.”

However, a number of other states with Democratic governors, including California and New York, closed spiritual institutions as well as some other kinds of businesses. In California, Governor Gavin Newsom stopped chanting or singing during religious services as well as domestic devotion. Next, New York Governor The number of attendees at a system was constrained by Andrew Cuomo. The 10 and 25-person occupancy restrictions in New York were eventually found to be First Amendment violations by the U.S. Supreme Court.

State Senator Chap Petersen, a Democrat, stated that the First Amendment does protect this right during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s debate on HB 2171 in February.

According to the First Amendment, it is possible to determine whether temples have the right to be open at all times. On that, there has been a lot of prosecution. Petersen said at the council hearing,” At the very least, we could say they’re[ places of worship ] essential to a place, so I may support the bill.”

Republicans objected to the closure of temples while allowing wine businesses to remain open. On this claim, some progressive Democrats pushed back, claiming that the wine shops were permitted to stay empty because they did not have large crowds of customers in one location, which prevented them from posing a safety risk.

I don’t believe you may compare the two, said Democrat Sen. Jennifer Boysko.” The ability to send and receive something else suffering was significantly higher if you stayed for more than 20 days.”

The bill’s final version was approved with a 53 – 43 vote in favor of the proposal.