DEVELOPING STORY: National Park Service officials in Virginia are saying that a religious group isn’t allowed to hold a special mass ceremony in a park cemetery. The Knights of Columbus had been holding the service since the 1960s.
First Liberty Institute attorney Roger Byron explained the controversy during an appearance on The Todd Starnes Show on Newsmax. Watch the interview above.
But for the first time last year and again this year, the NPS denied the Knights a permit to hold the service in the cemetery, citing a new policy that designates “religious services” as prohibited “demonstrations.”
“Due to the religious nature of the Knights’ annual service to honor and pray for the nation’s fallen soldiers, they have been assigned a second-class status and relegated to the proverbial back of the bus,” Byron said. “That is precisely the kind of unlawful discrimination and censorship the First Amendment was enacted to prevent. Surely, this decision was an oversight.”
“Our hope is that the National Park Service will immediately correct this error and grant the permit,” said John Moran, Partner at McGuireWoods. “This policy and the decision to block the Knights of Columbus from continuing their long-standing religious tradition is a blatant violation of the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”
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