CHARLESTON — West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey is leading a coalition of 24 states in filing an amicus brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to remedy a lower court’s decision that could leave many religious practitioners unprotected from violence and threats.
The case involves threats against Falun Gong, a religious group founded in China in 1992. Their practice involves a set of meditation exercises and written text that “preach the virtues of truth, benevolence and forbearance.” It was banned in China in 1999. Many practitioners fled to the United States, but continued to be subjected to persecution from Chinese communist sympathizers.
“This is America, and everyone should be able to practice their religious beliefs without fear of persecution,” Morrisey said in a press release. “The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit’s interpretation of an important law stopping violence against places of worship is wrong and should be fixed.”
Morrisey
Morrisey's office says the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994 prohibits a person from intentionally injuring, intimidating or interfering with another who is exercising his or her religion “at a place of religious worship.”
Falun Gong practitioners passed out flyers and displayed posters protesting the Chinese Communist Party's treatment of Falun Gong at sidewalk tables in Flushing, Queens, New York. The practitioners claim the Chinese Anti-Cult World Alliance harassed them in the vicinity of those tables — the claimed “place of religious worship” — in violation of FACEA.
The Second Circuit denied the Falun Gong practitioners the act’s protection by interpreting it to reach only places primarily devoted to religious worship — as determined by only select readers or “collectives” within a given religion.
“That decision narrowed a statute meant to bar the worst acts of violence in many of America’s sacred places,” Morrisey said. “It also compels victims of religious violence to prove their activity was religious enough and enmeshes courts in deciding what constitutes true worship warranting protection.”
Morrisey was joined in the brief by his counterparts in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia.
Supreme Court of the United States case number 21-1429