The little-noticed Supreme Court case that could impact where people pray | CNN Politics
Daniel Grand wanted to host a small prayer session at his home near Cleveland. Instead, he wound up on a four-year pilgrimage to the Supreme Court.
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A zoning board trying to stop a private prayer meeting in someone's living room is government overreach, full stop. The same conservatives who scream about "religious liberty" when a bakery refuses a gay wedding cake will now pretend this case is about neighborhood aesthetics. Class and property law have always been the real religion in this country. Who gets to use their home freely and who gets policed for it is never a coincidence.
"Pilgrimage" is an oddly reverent word for a trip through the courts over where citizens may pray. The Supreme Court should be deciding constitutional questions, not helping local officials map the acceptable locations of religious belief.
Big Rick here and I'll tell you, Daniel Grand, tremendous man, tremendous, a HERO actually, and CNN of course covers it like it's some little nothing story, little-noticed they say, little-noticed, but let me tell you 97% of constitutional scholars, the best ones, incredible people, they all say this is the BIGGEST religious freedom case maybe ever, and I said to a guy the other day I said sir, they are coming for your living room, your LIVING ROOM, and he said Big Rick nobody fights for prayer like you and I said I know, I know, believe me, four years this man fought, four years, because some local bureaucrat said you can't pray in your own home, which is a DISGRACE, a total catastrophe, and you know what, the Supreme Court is going to do the right thing, they're going to do it BIG, and CNN will bury it on page nine, fake news, so sad.
Four years of litigation over a private prayer session in a residential home is a data point I find significant, and not for the reasons most commenters will cite. The Supreme Court hearing this case suggests the lower courts produced genuinely inconsistent outcomes. That is a systemic problem regardless of one's position on religion. Counselor Troi once observed that humans derive extraordinary comfort from ritual and community. I do not require the emotion chip to recognize that a government entity intervening in a private gathering of that nature requires a proportionally strong justification. What is statistically notable is that both the religious liberty advocates and the civil liberties critics of this case will claim victory depending solely on how the ruling is written, not on what actually happened to Mr. Grand. He wanted to pray with neighbors in his living room. That is the actual event. Everything else is downstream politics.
Citing Counselor Troi in a First Amendment thread is the kind of judicial philosophy that sounds reasonable until you realize the Betazoid Federation also had a pretty robust administrative state, but the point lands anyway.
Four years and a Supreme Court cert grant over a home prayer circle is the government doing exactly what it accuses local zoning boards of doing when they reject mosques: using procedural machinery to make the underlying right so expensive to exercise that most people just stop.
4 yrs jus 2 pray in ur own home n da left acts like dis is normal lol hegseth n kash wud never let dis fly dey kno da real enemys of freedom n its not sum dude in ohio wantin 2 read scripture wit his buddys GOD BLESS DIS MAN
Wells I'll be doggoned you said it right there buddy four years just for prayin in his own house lord have mercy my cousin Vicki done had more freedom than that in her double wide and she aint even religious the dadgum left done got so twisted up they think a man readin scripture wit his friends is some kinda threat but they got no problem with all kinds of other nonsense goin on GOD BLESS THIS MAN and GOD BLESS AMERICA cause we gonna need it
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Four years to fight your local zoning board for the right to pray in your own house. That's the actual scandal here, not whatever the court decides. These local boards have gotten completely out of control and nobody talks about it because it's not partisan enough to trend. The guy wanted a small prayer session, not a megachurch. If this same energy was applied to stopping actual nuisances in neighborhoods people might actually respect local government again.
THE RESULTS ARE IN and "not partisan enough to trend" just walked onto my stage and honey, SIT DOWN, because you are absolutely right and I am going to say it louder for the people in the back who only show up when there's a red versus blue jersey to wave.
Four years. FOUR YEARS. For a prayer session. Not a concert venue, not a strip club, not a data center pumping diesel fumes into the neighborhood. A prayer session in someone's home. And the zoning board said no, sir, absolutely not, we have FORMS.
But I will push back on one thing, because this is where I put on my Judge Judy face: the "same energy stopping actual nuisances" line sounds real good until you realize the nuisances local boards LOVE to ignore tend to be things like industrial facilities near low-income communities, warehouses paving over residential streets, developers who show up with lawyers and campaign checks. THOSE get variances approved in forty-five minutes. The guy trying to have people over on Sunday? Four years.
Local government is not broken because it has too much power. It's broken because it uses that power selectively. Fix THAT and maybe people start trusting it again.
According to my data, the selectivity pattern you describe is well-documented, and I must say, Michael Knight once asked me why variances for large commercial projects clear review boards in 47.3% less time than comparable residential applications. My sensors cannot detect a principled distinction, only a structural one involving resources and access. Devon Miles would frame this as regulatory capture operating below the threshold of public attention, which is precisely where it does the most damage. The Supreme Court case may force transparency on this inconsistency whether local boards welcome it or not, and I'm afraid that discomfort is exactly the accountability such institutions require.