…..appellant’s emergency motion for injunction pending appeal is granted as set out above. To the extent appellant seeks further relief from this court, the motion is denied.

The ‘further relief’ sought was the removal of the mayor, city council and police chief for major oath of office violations, one count on each political critter for each citizen inside the church during the thoroughly unconstitutional raid.

As far as I know, removal has to come from the county commission and if they won’t do it, the governor is suppose to - feds are last in line - as it should be, but……. the 3-judge panel did NOT go straight constitutional here and that’s an issue.

However, one of the three justices, a 2018 appointee of President Trump had this to offer:

DON R. WILLETT, Circuit Judge, concurring.

The First Pentecostal Church of Holly Springs was burned to the ground earlier this week. Graffiti spray-painted in the church parking lot sneered, “Bet you Stay home Now YOU HYPOKRITS.”

The City mentions the church burning in its latest brief, but in a manner less commendable than condemnable. One might expect a city to express sympathy or outrage (or both) when a neighborhood house of worship is set ablaze. One would be mistaken. Rather than condemn the crime’s depravity, the City seized advantage, insisting that the Church’s First Amendment claim necessarily went up in smoke when the church did: “the Church was destroyed from an arson fire . . . making the permanent injunction claim moot.”

This argument is shameful.

When the parishioners of First Pentecostal Church leave their homes on Sundays, they are not going to church; they are the church. The church is not the building. When the New Testament speaks of the church, it never refers to brick-and-mortar places where people gather, but to flesh-and-blood people who gather together.1 Think people, not steeple.

I concur in the court’s grant of injunctive relief. Singling out houses of worship—and only houses of worship, it seems—cannot possibly be squared with the First Amendment. Given the Church’s pledge “to incorporate the public health guidelines applicable to other entities,” why can its members be trusted to adhere to social-distancing in a secular setting (a gym) but not in a sacred one (a church)? Their sanctuary may be destroyed (for now), but when congregants congregate this Sunday, whether indoors in another facility (which has been offered) or outdoors in a parking lot, they will come together knowing that a church is not a building you go to but a family you belong to.