<\/p>\n
The Amish community in Minnesota is pushing back amid claims of unfair government policies that purportedly fail to offer religious accommodations \u2014 and even reportedly led to one Amish man\u2019s arrest.<\/p>\n
First Liberty attorney Ryan Gardner said his firm is representing two Amish congregations in Mille Lacs County, Minnesota, arguing the county itself has \u201cessentially criminalized being Amish.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAs you might know, the Amish community lives by a pretty strict set of religious principles, and many of those involve not being involved in technology,\u201d Gardner said. \u201cAnd kind of keeping to themselves \u2026 they want to be able to live according to their religious beliefs, and a lot of what those beliefs require, frankly \u2026 to be set apart from modern society.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to First Liberty, problems began for these congregations during COVID-19, when county officials reportedly implemented a new permitting system for building structures and homes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt went from a paper form to an electronic form,\u201d Gardner said. \u201cAs you might imagine, the Amish don\u2019t really use electronic forms or the internet, so this was a significant problem, and they had no alternative for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n
With no other option for simply getting clearance to build homes, he said \u201ca lot of the people in these congregations just proceeded to build anyways because they didn\u2019t have a choice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gardner said Mille Lacs County did eventually change the policy to make a paper option available, but added there is an additional $50 fee for requesting permitting on paper.<\/p>\n
\u201cPretty much the only people who are actually using that are the Amish, and so now they\u2019re having to pay a special fee just to even start the permitting process,\u201d the lawyer said. \u201cAnd once they get in, there are more problems because they\u2019re trying to impose all kinds of modern requirements that are just inconsistent with the Amish way of life.\u201d<\/p>\n
***AI search tools threaten to hide CBN News stories from results. Sign up for\u00a0<\/strong>CBN Newsletters\u00a0today to<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0ensure you can still find the latest news from a Christian perspective.***<\/strong><\/p>\n Gardner said officials have been so hard on the Amish that they even put one man in jail \u201cfor the crime of building and living in his home.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis particular individual had been living in his home for something like five years and then, suddenly, he\u2019s criminally cited for it, and he goes to court, and he\u2019s convicted,\u201d the lawyer said. \u201cAnd he is \u2026 immediately taken to jail.\u201d<\/p>\n Gardner said it is \u201cludicrous\u201d and \u201cextreme\u201d to prosecute someone for such a \u201cpetty\u201d offense, and added that such a reaction is rare. He added that the Amish had purportedly tried to go to the county to work the issue out but were \u201cmet with hostility.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHere\u2019s the kicker in all of this,\u201d he continued, \u201cBuilt into the very ordinance that the county is enforcing here is a provision that gives the county discretion to give exemptions to these requirements to anybody that it wants.\u201d<\/p>\n First Liberty sent a letter to the county recently demanding they stop enforcement actions against the Amish, especially considering warrants that are currently out for others. They\u2019re also looking for an exemption that would settle the issue once and for all, noting that, from his perspective, the Amish build insanely safe structures.<\/p>\n Mille Lacs County told CBN News that lawyers cannot comment on ongoing cases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Amish community in Minnesota is pushing back amid claims of unfair government policies that purportedly fail to offer religious accommodations \u2014 and even reportedly led to one Amish man\u2019s arrest. First Liberty attorney Ryan Gardner said his firm is representing two Amish congregations in Mille Lacs County, Minnesota, arguing the county itself has \u201cessentially<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32335,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[4377,10778,2034,10781,10779,2873,685,10780,200],"class_list":["post-32334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jesus","tag-accused","tag-amish","tag-county","tag-criminalizing","tag-electronic","tag-jailed","tag-man","tag-permit","tag-reportedly"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}