Gathering bans and Churches With bans on gatherings due to the virus, can the government close churches or are they exempt due to seperation laws?
The Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment requires government restrictions on churches to satisfy a compelling government interest, such as preventing massive deaths from disease. The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment prohibits the government from granting special privileges to a specific religion or to all religions (Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 – government may not "pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions or prefer one religion over another"). Exempting only religious gatherings (however defined) would be unconstitutional. Restricting all gatherings (including religious gatherings) would be constitutional (subject to the general restrictions being itself constitutional).
The religious freedom argument has no legs following Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990). Although a State would be "prohibiting the free exercise [of religion]" in violation of the Clause if it sought to ban the performance of (or abstention from) physical acts solely because of their religious motivation, the Clause does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a law that incidentally forbids (or requires) the performance of an act that his religious belief requires (or forbids) if the law is not specifically directed to religious practice and is otherwise constitutional as applied to those who engage in the specified act for nonreligious reasons. With respect to the "involuntary servitude", this was dealt with in Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, 379 U.S. 241 (1964). The engagement of Federal power relied on the interstate commerce clause but the current case, as a state law matter, does not need to do this. Basically, by voluntarily providing the goods/service to the public, they agree that they will provide it in accordance with the law governing that kind of commerce. They are free to not provide it to anyone but if they choose to supply it they must supply it to everyone (subject ti normal rules of commerce like the customer actually paying etc.).
You don't have to interact with people if you don't want to If you don't want to talk or otherwise interact with somebody in a personal capacity, you don't have to. Your reasons for doing so are your reasons. Some of the congregation may have roles that require them to interact with Jane in what I will loosely call an &quot;official&quot; capacity. For example, if one of the congregants is a government employee and government business requires the interaction, they would have to do so. It gets a little tricky when there is not a clear legal duty to interact. For example, if a congregant is an employee of a company with which Jane has business and who would normally be the person to interact with Jane, they might reasonably claim that they have a religious belief that prevents them from doing so. Anti-discrimination law may require the employer to make reasonable accommodations for that belief, for example, by getting a different employee to interact with Jane.
No. The Flag Code is not a criminal law, so the government is not permitted to bring criminal prosecution for violating it, and it therefore cannot secure a proper conviction for such a violation.
For the same reason you can’t ask the parties to a contract what they meant Legislation, once enacted, stands on its own independent of the people who drafted it, introduced it to Parliament and voted for or against it. These are not the same people in any event and since the legislation might have been passed anywhere between the 13th and 21st centuries, a lot of them will be dead. There’s a fundamental issue of fairness here. The people who are obliged to comply with the law (you and I) can’t ask the politicians so neither can the judges who have to decide if we did. Further, the judiciary cannot interact with the executive or the legislature in this way without violating the principle of separation of powers. Imagine you are charged with a crime and your guilt or innocence turns on the interpretation of the statute. Do you really want politicians who are looking at how the case plays out on Twitter telling the judge which interpretation to use i.e. effectively telling them whether you are guilty or not?
Clause (c) says that while schools cannot generally restrict otherwise legal expressions by students, a school run by a religious organization can restrict such speech in terms of its tenets. It then becomes a matter of fact to be proven in court that the church has a particular tenet. So if you are asking whether it is correct that the religion exception is narrowly limited to contradictions of the religion's tenets, that is correct.
You have misread the DMLP page. In Pennsylvania, it is illegal to record a conversation if you are a party and if the other party does not consent. The fact that federal law doesn't ban something doesn't mean that states can't ban it. There is generally a presumption that when both the feds and the states can legitimately regulate something, the feds weren't trying to preempt all state laws on the topic. While people often say "federal law takes precedence over state law," the normal rule is that both laws apply; the federal law only blocks the state law if the feds wanted to block said state laws. So far as I can tell, the federal law has never been held to preempt two-party consent laws; the point of the federal law was to restrict recording, not extend it. It's like how federal law doesn't prohibit taking hostages inside the US to coerce a private company into doing what you want (anti-terrorism laws might, I guess, but the federal hostage-taking law doesn't); while the federal law excludes most hostage-taking in the US, that doesn't mean that it's legal to take hostages. Congress sometimes wants to establish nationwide standards for something, but the presumption is that they didn't.
Laws against such actions are not stated in terms of popular and fluid concepts like "computer virus", they are stated in terms of clear concepts like "unauthorized access". There are federal and state laws against this. This web site lists and links to all of the state laws on the matter. There is also a federal law: a detailed legal analysis by DOJ is given here. There are some limits to federal jurisdiction, for example "protected computers" include "computers used in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce or communication". The term "affecting interstate or foreign commerce or communication" is widely used in federal law, and can be used to prohibit growing feed for your own animals. Anything that you "send" clearly affects interstate commerce (the internet is internationally connected). 18 USC 1030(a) says Whoever ... (2) intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access, and thereby obtains...(C) information from any protected computer Essentially, a computer connected to the outside world is protected. The key here is "without authorization". If you authorize MS to report back stuff about your computer, that is not unauthorized. It may not be possible to use their product without giving such authorization, in which case you can use a different product that doesn't require that you grant authorization. There is also the possibility that some software producer has technically violates the law because they think that it's okay for them to access the computer as long as they do no harm. Typically, people are not aware that they have granted software publishers access to their computer. The concept of "harm" is pretty much irrelevant to computer-crime criminal law. It would be relevant, though, if a plaintiff were to sue someone for sniffing around their computer: then you'd have to show that you were damaged.