Short Circuit

Can a city require you to get a permit if you’re having a few people over to pray? In an Ohio town it was a little unclear. As IJ’s Suranjan Sen explains, an Orthodox Jewish man wanted to have enough people over that he could hold a proper service for the Sabbath. There was no worry about traffic and parking because Orthodox Jews don’t drive on the Sabbath. But that didn’t prevent a neighbor from complaining anyway. Things got confusing at city hall, though, where some officials weren’t even sure the man needed a “house of worship” permit. Even so, he went to federal court, ended up in the Sixth Circuit, and got dismissed because the case as not ripe. Along the way there’s a lot of talk about facial vs. as-applied claims and how land use is weird. Then we go to Tate Cooper of IJ with a couple subjects we’ve specialized in on Short Circuit over the years: drones and free speech. This time they’re together in a bit of a new way. A company provides a service to hunters for drones to help them find their prey aft