How COVID-19 church shutdowns broke the First Amendment

How COVID-19 church shutdowns broke the First Amendment

Gabriel Rench didn’t expect to be arrested for singing hymns. On September 23, 2020, he and two fellow congregants from Christ Church joined roughly 150 people at a Moscow, Idaho, parking lot for a 20-minute outdoor “psalm sing” — a peaceful protest of the city’s mask mandate. Police arrested all three. In July 2023, the city paid $300,000 to settle its First Amendment lawsuit. The federal judge didn’t mince words: the city had “indisputably err…