Today, a California District Court entered an order approving Liberty Counsel’s settlement of the lawsuit on behalf of Harvest Rock Church and Harvest International Ministry against California Gov. Gavin Newsom. The full and final settlement was approved today by the District Court and thus is the first state-wide permanent injunction in the country against Covid restrictions on churches and places of worship.
Under the agreed state-wide permanent injunction, all California churches may hold worship without discriminatory restrictions.
Under the settlement, California may no longer impose discriminatory restrictions upon houses of worship. The governor must pay Liberty Counsel $1,350,000 to reimburse attorney’s fees and costs.
The settlement references several Supreme Court opinions, including Harvest Rock Church v. Newsom, that include a long list of similar nonreligious activity the High Court set forth as comparable gatherings. These include grocery stores, warehouses, big box stores, transportation, infrastructure, telecommunications, and much more. In other words, churches and places of worship may never again have discriminatory restrictions placed on them that are not equally applied to a long list of “critical infrastructure” or “essential services” as outlined in several Supreme Court precedents cited in the settlement agreement.
Pastor Ché Ahn, founder of Harvest Rock Church and Harvest International Ministry, received a letter from the Pasadena Criminal Prosecutor threatening him, the staff, and anyone who attends church with daily criminal charges each up to one year in prison, and daily fines of $1,000. Despite this intense opposition, Pastor Ahn stood against these unconstitutional executive orders. He risked criminal charges and fines, as did those who worked for the church and those who attended. Thanks to his leadership, every church in California is now free.
Newsom originally imposed the most severe restrictions on churches and even home Bible studies and worship in the nation. Now after multiple reprimands from the U.S. Supreme Court, including two on behalf of Harvest Rock Church and Harvest International Ministry, Gov. Newsom will be the first governor in America to have a permanent injunction against him on behalf of houses of worship.
This case involved three emergency injunctions pending appeal at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, two oral arguments before a panel of three judges, two orders from the U.S. Supreme Court, including an injunction pending appeal issued by the High Court on February 5, 2021.
The timeline for actions regarding California’s worship restrictions include:
March 19, 2020 – May 25, 2020: No Worship
May 26, 2020 – July 12, 2020: 25 percent capacity but no more than 100 people
July 13, 2020 – April 8, 2021: No worship for over 90 percent of California
April 9, 2021 – April 12, 2021: Restrictions on home Bible study lifted but not on singing and chanting
April 13, 2021 – May 9, 2021: Mandatory attendance limits are lifted
May 17, 2021 – and Forever: Discriminatory restrictions on churches permanently removed
Under the settlement agreement, discriminatory restrictions on worship and religious gatherings may no longer be applied to churches and places of worship….
The above comes from a May 17 release from Liberty Counsel.
It was a thoroughly manufactured crisis to tank the economy to defeat Trump. And they still had to cheat to “win”.
Excellent news!
Thank you for your leadership
Abp. GomezPastor Ché Ahn!Shamefully, the Catholic hierarchy left this battle to those who don’t even believe in The Real Presence. At lest they were willing to take on the fight. Their victory is ours too, but we must remember who was willing to do the heavy lifting.
Crickets from every Bishop and Archbishop in California. Just imagine the leverage that would have been brought to bear on Newsom if even a few of California’s Bishops and Archbishops had to guts to speak out against Newsom’s anti-religion behavior. It is a challenge to remain a faithful Catholic these days, and it is not due to the likes of Newsom but rather to the failure of Catholic Bishops and Archbishops to have the guts to stand up and speak our for faithful Catholics. St. Stephen, the first martyr, must be turning over in his grave.
I want to defend Archbishop Cordileone who is always defending the Church and all her teachings. He even had a free the mass movement. So let’s please not lump all Bishops together.
what did you expect from some of these liberal catholic Bishops, instead of leading the flock, political games they shall play. What a shame
Manufactured crisis? Tell that to the 580k Americans dead from the disease. Any evidence to support allegation of ‘manufactured crisis’??
Does Newsom personally have to pay the fine? Or just the State?
580k? Tell that to the 580k, 94% of which died from OTHER CAUSES including suicide and poverty.
https://www.aier.org/article/more-covid-suicides-than-covid-deaths-in-kids/
There is plenty of evidence that this is massive fraud. But in the mean time, we have people forced out of work being they didn’t want to wear mask or vaccine, or worse COULDN’T wear a mask or vaccinate. Has it bothered to occur to you that some people are allergic to many of the common ingredients found in vaccines, including chicken proteins? Have an egg allergy? Any vaccine with that in there could trigger anaphylaxis and kill you. No, you should not be forced to take vaccines.
The Catholic Church refuses to take a Stand against abortion and especially when we Catholics could not worship inside or sing !! They don’t have a backbone as the Church has too far to the left
The Catholic Church has always taken a stand against abortion.
It all makes sense if you realize that most bishops just want a life of comfort and ease. They want to make it to retirement without the ship sinking. They don’t want to have to make any tough decisions.
The Covid “crisis” is said to be manufactured because there were inexpensive, fast-acting, time-tested, safe drugs available from the first day of the outbreak to treat and cure Covid in a matter of days. All such cures were suppressed because the $$$ making “vaccine” can’t get FDA approval if there are alternative treatments.
Look up the “White Paper published by America’s Frontline Doctors. It clearly and succinctly sums up the 90+ percent cure rate using Hydroxychloroquine+zinc+Azithromycin. Look up Dr. Kory’s testimony to the U.S. Congress on Ivermectin and it’s equally high cure rate. Budesonid was used early on with great success as were dozens of other drugs. There was ZERO need for a pandemic then or now.
The doctors who used these drugs were demonized, deplatformed, threatened, etc., but they are still out there. You’ll have to dig around to find them because the media censorship has been so thorough. Why? Because the “vaccine” can’t be approved if there are alternative treatments, and there are, many of them. Look up Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, Dr. Peter Breggin, Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, Dr. Dolores Cahill, Dr. Peter McCollough, FLCCC Alliance, for starters. There are hundred more doctors saying the same thing. Then find Dr. Reiner Feullmich, an attorney who is bringing charges against The WHO for this manufactured crisis, starting with the fake PCR test that’s 90%+ wrong according to the New York Times, whose own inventor said from the get-go it wouldn’t detect Covid. Remember Elon Must taking four PCR tests on the same day in the same place from the same nurse. 2 Positives, 2 Negative.. If you can’t find anything on Google or on Youtube, Twitter, etc. it’s because they are deplatforming opponents of the COVID narrative. Try Duckduckgo.com as an alternative search engine,
In other words, the 580k Americans who are alleged to have died from COVID would be alive today if the CDC and its related agencies and the pharmaceutical industry hadn’t made it impossible for doctors who knew how to cure Covid quickly and cheaply and safely hadn’t been hamstrung. Mass murder anyone?.
Alice – It’s not about the science and never was. The Covid has been a morality play from the start.
Just read some of the comments form the Bobones, YFC etc who daily rent their on line garments for all here to see. And, had the temerity to scold preists and bishops who actually opend up for Mass. All the mask nonsense, distancing, school closings, reduction of the sacraments has been for nothing as the covid was always a slightly worse flu.
It goes beyond this.
We had pandemic that Democrats told Trump he was being xenophobic about while he was under impeachment proceedings.
When those proceedings failed, suddenly this is a big issue. They build it up to first delay important elections, and then to strongly encourage mail-in elections, which are easy to fix because real people don’t vote in person.
But, you say, this is worldwide. YES. This is a globalist coup on sovereign countries to build NWO one-world state and track everyone. First sabotage countries so they can’t ever elect legit government again, then get much of the population to poison/sterilize themselves and the survivors to be totally tracked in the name of medical safety.
By the way, there is a list online of countries without COVID. Aside from tiny obscure islands, or remote countries, there are two countries that cannot be accounted for unless you understand what’s actually going on. These are North Korea (an absolutist dictatorship, that is basically already the model of complete authoritarianism) and Turkmenistan (Muslim country with a government that has no opposition parties at all).
Some of the Bishops could not be bothered to protect the flock from Newsom since they were too busy writing their speeches about raising the taxes on coal and “protecting the environment” and “the rights of migrants”.
May God have mercy on them if they ever repent.
Shame, Shame on the California Catholic Bishops for lacking courage and enough belief in God to stand up against this Evil Governor Newsom.
It says the Governor is to pay the fees. I hope that’s what it means and not the Governor’s office paying the fees. Which would then just be California’s paying. I want Newsom to pay them. This may make him think before he unfairly targets places or people of faith.