Parishioners in their cars with windows up, fined $500 for attending drive-in church service

GREENVILLE, Miss. (WREG) – Churchgoers who attended a drive-in service at a church in Greenville, Mississippi, were fined $500 for reportedly violating a curfew order from the mayor.

During Thursday night service at King James Bible Baptist Church, while parishioners sat in their vehicles listening to Pastor Charles Hamilton, Greenville Police surrounded the church parking lot.

Video from Pastor Hamilton of King James Bible Baptist Church in Greenville, MS. Church tried the “drive-in” method of holding services & were targeted due to the Mayor issuing an order prohibiting such services. Watch as an officer tells the Pastor that his rights are suspended. pic.twitter.com/zLdT6Qd8ew

— Nick Short (@PoliticalShort) April 11, 2020

Jeremy Dys, with First Liberty Institute, is representing Pastor Hamilton and says police were violating the church’s constitutional right while enforcing a curfew order from Mayor Errick Simmons.

“They park in their parking spaces, they keep their windows up, the doors closed, they never get out of the cars like the CDC recommends they do,” Dys said. “There’s no exception to the United States Constitution for a pandemic. What Mayor Simmons has done is to apply an order without regard to equality and he’s singled out churches in particular.”

King James Bible Baptist isn’t the only Greenville church police visited.

“We have everybody stay in their cars, with their windows up and go to a certain radio station, a low frequency station,” said Lee Gordon with Temple Baptist Church.

Gordon says there were about thirty cars in the parking lot of Temple Baptist Church.

“The police started coming up and we said, ‘we think we’re within our rights.’ So they started issuing tickets, five hundred dollar tickets,” Gordon said. “I don’t know, it may have been twenty to thirty tickets. Everybody got one. It wasn’t per car. Me and my wife was in a car together and both of us got tickets.”