With oral arguments set for Monday in a federal court case over a proposed Philadelphia safe drug consumption site, counsel for the would-be facility sent a letter to the judge in the case on Thursday calling out the Department of Justice (DOJ) for taking apparently contradictory legal positions.
In the Philadelphia safe consumption site case itself, the letter says, DOJ has argued that the harm reduction aims of Safehouse, the nonprofit attempting to open facility where people can use illicit substances in a medically supervised environment, are “socio-political” rather than religious.
In a separate case involving an Episcopal church in Oregon, however, DOJ recently filed a statement of interest arguing that “distribution of free meals to persons in need is ‘religious exercise’” that would be infringed by a local zoning ordinance.
Writing to Judge Gerald McHugh of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, DLA Piper attorney Ilana Eisenstein said the government can’t have it both ways.
DOJ’s arguments in the Oregon case, Eisenstein wrote, “demonstrate that Safehouse has adequately pled a substantial burden on its religious exercise.”
In other words, the letter asserts that if the government views handing out free meals to people in need as protected on religious grounds, it can’t simultaneously deny that harm reduction services could deserve similar protections.
“DOJ’s positions in that case are irreconcilable with its arguments here,” the letter says, “and confirm that this Court should deny the DOJ’s pending motion to dismiss.”
Hellbound and Down 