A 75-year-old devout Catholic under house arrest for an abortion facility protest is being denied her request to attend Mass on Sundays by President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice.
A federal judge agrees with the Justice Department that a wheelchair-bound woman with multiple health problems cannot be allowed to attend Mass once a week because of her conviction for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.
But the prohibition on Paulette Harlow, who can be seen sitting in a chair blocking part of an abortion facility in 2020, clearly violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
She is on house arrest following her conviction due to her physical disabilities. Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly is denying her reasonable request to attend Mass on Sundays.
The Religious Freedom Restoration Act prohibits the federal government from violating someone’s religious liberty unless it can prove it “is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest,” and it is using “the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.”
This is not the case.
The federal government may have a general interest in keeping a convicted, though hardly violent, criminal monitored in her home. It is not the “least restrictive means” possible to prevent her from leaving her home for two hours once a week to practice her religious faith.
While she is able now to have a priest come to her house, this is not a long-term guarantee. The Archdiocese of Boston, where she lives, sometimes has one priest serving multiple churches.
Harlow awaits sentencing, which is set to occur next week. Even if she ends up going to prison, it would not change how the Biden Justice Department has violated her rights in multiple ways.
The department’s refusal to accommodate her also makes another religious right of hers, to receive the sacrament of confession, more difficult. Many Catholics prefer the anonymity of confession behind a screen, versus face to face. (Yes, like how it is portrayed in movies.) Knowing the priest who is coming to her house removes this anonymity.
The Justice Department has other ways of ensuring she does not use a Catholic Mass to plot some escape. It could use electronic monitoring, which the federal courts already use for people on house arrest. That is the simplest way.
The Justice Department’s opposition to Harlow’s freedom of religion is in contrast to the Biden-Harris White House’s promises to create a “criminal justice system [that] protect[s] the public and ensure[s] fair and impartial justice for all.”
The move by the Biden Justice Department is part of a troubling history of targeting both Catholics and other conservative Christians. The FBI infamously put out an intelligence memo targeting Catholics who prefer the Latin Mass as potential extremists. Its justification was an Atlantic article about the rosary prayer beads being a weapon and reporting from the leftist Southern Poverty Law Center.
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Attorney General Merrick Garland also asked for law enforcement’s help to stop alleged threats from citizens who opposed sexualized school curricula or COVID-19 restrictions. Similarly, the Biden Justice Department found an old state charge, already tossed by a judge, and tried, unsuccessfully, to use it to prosecute pro-life Catholic father Mark Houck.
Sanjay Patel, the same prosecutor who failed to convict Houck, is also opposing Harlow’s religious freedom rights. He even went to speak to a George Mason University law school group last year to talk about FACE Act enforcement. Next year he should go back to law school — not to teach, but for a refresher on religious freedom rights.
Matt Lamb is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is an associate editor for the College Fix and has previously worked for Students for Life of America and Turning Point USA.