Judge dismisses lawsuit filed by pastors against Gov. Carney

DELAWARE – Superior Court Judge Meghan Adams has granted Governor John Carney’s effort to dismiss and throw out the lawsuit by two pastors claiming he denied their religious freedoms.

The lawsuit claimed that Carney’s Emergency Orders throughout the first 14 weeks of the COVID lockdown in 2020 denied each of these pastors on 29 separate occasions their absolute freedoms and that he and all future Delaware Governors must keep their “hands off” the church in any future emergencies, regardless of any “pretense” they may offer.

Thomas Neuberger, attorney for the pastors, said “The Court refused to rule on the question of whether the Delaware Bill of Rights requires that churches remain open when Walmart, Acme, and liquor stores are open and Christians are locked down and out of their churches, despite the absolute protection given them in the Delaware Constitution of 1776. We will appeal to the Delaware Supreme Court and ask it to decide in Constitutional Law class 101 whether powers given to the Governor to discriminate against churches by the General Assembly can ignore freedoms found in our Bill of Rights.”

Co-Counsel Stephen Neuberger added, “At the start of the Revolutionary War, the Delaware Bill of Rights of September 1776 declared that the new Delaware government can never interfere with “the right of conscience in the free exercise of religious worship.” Eleven days later the first Delaware Constitution ordered that government can never violate religious freedom for “any pretense whatsoever.” The restated Delaware Constitutions of 1792, 1831, and present day 1897, all say the same thing. Yet Governor Carney illegally ignored this total freedom with his pandemic lockdowns of all our churches while allowing 236 categories of secular businesses to remain open.”

“The Governor’s health emergency excuse does not hold water because the Revolutionary War founders of Delaware and their ancestors experienced and well understood the threat of countless deaths by malaria, smallpox epidemic, bubonic plague, and other deadly diseases. So despite such threats, in Delaware the doors to the church still were always to be open to pray and implore the mercy of Almighty God from plague or pandemic with which the founders were well familiar,” said co-counsel Thomas Crumplar.