Browsed by
Tag: First Amendment Law

Life Hangs in the Balance: Weighing Coronavirus Church Closings Against the RFRA

Life Hangs in the Balance: Weighing Coronavirus Church Closings Against the RFRA

On March 27, the Hillsborough County Emergency Policy Group unanimously issued an order restricting the gatherings of non-essential businesses and services. The Rev. Rodney Howard-Browne responded that he would only cancel church services for the Rapture and that pastors who canceled services were “pansies.” After holding church services on March 29, county authorities arrested Howard-Browne for unlawful assembly and violating the public health emergency order. While the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) of 1993 applies only to the federal government,…

Read More Read More

Protests During the Pandemic

Protests During the Pandemic

As a general rule, the government is permitted to restrict activities, including protesting, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The government can regulate the time, place, and manner of speech in public forums with a content neutral restriction so long as the restriction is narrowly tailored to “serve a significant government interest” and “leave[s] open ample alternative channels for communication of the information.” A shelter-in-place order can constitutionally prevent public gatherings for a period of time (many of these orders are in…

Read More Read More

Two Conceptions of Rights: Twenty-Five Years Later

Two Conceptions of Rights: Twenty-Five Years Later

The following piece is a part of NULR of Note’s “Bring Back The ‘90s” initiative, aimed at exploring the evolution of legal thinking over the past three decades. For more, click here. It is both gratifying and disheartening to be asked to comment on my now twenty-five-year-old Article, From Cannibalism to Caesareans: Two Conceptions of Fundamental Rights. It is gratifying to think that the thesis of that Article remains worth discussing a quarter of a century later, but disheartening to…

Read More Read More