Stripped of its rhetoric, the decision of Western District of Kentucky judge Justin Walker, who received his commission on October 25, 2019,* in On Fire Christian Center v. Fischer is likely correct. Prohibiting drive-thru religious observations failed to satisfy strict scrutiny.

The ruling came as Republicans blasted Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s statewide plan to order people into quarantine if they attend mass gatherings, including religious ones.

On Fire Christian Church had sued Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer and the city after Fischer announced drive-in style religious gatherings were not allowed on Easter.

Judge Walker enjoined Mayor Fischer from enforcing this prohibition. Fair enough. But Judge Justin Walker neither started nor stopped with addressing the First Amendment analysis, which would have been sufficient.

On Holy Thursday, an American mayor criminalized the communal celebration of Easter.

That sentence is one that this Court never expected to see outside the pages of a dystopian
novel, or perhaps the pages of The Onion. But two days ago, citing the need for social distancing during the current pandemic, Louisville’s Mayor Greg Fischer ordered Christians not to attend Sunday services, even if they remained in their cars to worship – and even though it’s Easter.

The Mayor’s decision is stunning.

And it is, “beyond all reason,” unconstitutional.

This rhetoric is hyperbolic, inaccurate and outrageous, as are the pages of religious stories that follow, offered to show the depth and importance of religion in our history, none of which was at issue. After acquitting Mayor Fischer of acting in bad faith, which he notes is irrelevant to the issue at hand, Judge Walker goes on.

At the same time, the Court does not for a moment doubt that for some believers Easter means gathering together, if not hand in hand or shoulder to shoulder, then at least car fender to car fender. Religion is not “some purely personal avocation that can be indulged entirely in  secret, like pornography, in the privacy of one’s room. For most believers, it is not that, and has never been.”

If you ever need a cite for the proposition that religion is not pornography, it’s now available. But Judge Walker returns to preaching at the end of his opinion.

Some who read this Court’s opinion will disagree with the Mayor. Others will disagree with the Court. And each camp will include some readers who share On Fire’s faith, others whose conscience calls them to a different faith, and still others who profess no faith at all. Each of them, believers and non-believers, deserves at least this from the Court: To know why I decided as I did. You may not agree with my reasons, but my role as a judge is to explain, to teach, and perhaps, at least on occasion, to persuade.

This is wrong and nonsense. A judge’s role is to apply the law without fear or favor. A judge is neither a teacher nor a moral arbiter, and it is never to “persuade” others to believe what he believes.

The Christians of On Fire, however, owe no one an explanation for why they will gather together this Easter Sunday to celebrate what they believe to be a miracle and a mystery. True, they can attempt to explain it. True, they can try to teach. But to the nonbeliever, the Passion of Jesus – the betrayals, the torture, the state-sponsored murder of God’s only Son, and the empty tomb on the third day – makes no sense at all. And even to the believer, or at least to some of them, it can be incomprehensible as well.

But for the men and women of On Fire, Christ’s sacrifice isn’t about the logic of this world. Nor is their Easter Sunday celebration. The reason they will be there for each other and their Lord is the reason they believe He was and is there for us. For them, for all believers, “it isn’t a matter of reason; finally, it’s a matter of love.”

This labored recitation of religious beliefs is not merely immaterial, since the only requirement is that the beliefs be sincerely held and there was no challenge to the sincerity of On Fire’s beliefs in particular or Christianity in general, but bizarrely over the top. But what’s the problem?

As there is growing concern over judicial activism from the left, where “rights” are created out of such vagaries as decency, morality and dignity, or even worse, “justice,” a decision containing such rhetorical flourishes is the equivalent of dropping a bomb into the mix. And Judge Walker, despite his having yet to launder his new robe, has been nominated for the D.C. Circuit.

If Judge Walker can wax poetic about Christian beliefs, at great length and with no discernible relevance to the issue before the court, so too can any judge who harbors the view that he serves the cause of his own special brand of “justice.” Maybe the holding will be legally correct as well, or maybe it will be the outcome demanded by beliefs that bear no cognizable connection to law, testing whether the judge can string enough words together to create the appearance of a rationale or just giving in to rationalization.

Either way, the battle has been joined, and it’s a battle that has no business in a courthouse. Judges don’t do justice; they do law. Judges also don’t do religion, but now that Judge Walker has tossed his bomb, it will be an invitation for some other judge to retaliate with his beliefs about religion and the harm done in its name. If Judge Walker wants to preach, there is nothing to stop him from going fender to fender with his fellow believers this Easter Sunday. But that’s not why he’s been given a bench.

*As many have noted, Judge Walker was found “not qualified” by the ABA, which might have been taken more seriously had the ABA not burned its credibility about such matters and reduced its finding to meaninglessness.