The case of a woman who was accused of listening to conservative talk radio host Michael Savage on the radio too loudly and told to stop praying by police went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
When police arrived at Mary Anne Sause’s Louisburg, Kansas, apartment in 2013, she didn’t immediately respond — she was a rape victim years earlier and was afraid that their law enforcement claims were a ruse to gain entry, according to Savage’s website.
So she called a friend, who arrived just before the police paid her a second call.
“They wouldn’t tell me what they were there for,” she said. “I was told if I didn’t let them in I would get a ticket.”
Sause said she showed the officers her pocket Constitution, but they didn’t appear impressed.
“That is just a piece of paper that doesn’t work here,” she said one of the officers told her.
Sause said she’s a strong supporter of law enforcement, “but they came on in and it was just a nightmare.”
Sause, 61, filed a civil rights complaint against the two Louisburg police officers, representing herself.
After the trial court dismissed her lawsuit, the Plano, Texas-based nonprofit law firm First Liberty Institute agreed to handle the case. It eventually wound its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled Thursday that the lower court shouldn’t have been so hasty and it should have heard her case on its merits.
“I’m not the type to go out and drive down Louisburg and say, ‘Hey, look at me,’ but it was so sweet, thank you, God, and tears of joy and happiness,” Sause said. “And you know, it’s a fight for our country also.”
Her claim focused on the police officers’ reported refusal to allow Sause, a devout Catholic, to pray. After initially being granted permission while they were in her home, she was mockingly ordered to stop.
“We are glad that the Supreme Court recognized the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens like Miss Sause and that she’s able to have her day in court,” said Stephanie Taub, senior counsel at First Liberty, according to Savage's website. “We’re glad because no American should be told they can’t pray in their own home.”
First Liberty focuses its work on First Amendment religious freedom issues. It decided to get involved after reading the trial court’s statement that the order to stop praying didn’t infringe her First Amendment rights.
“That’s a little bit of a paraphrase, but essentially, it was saying that being ordered to stop praying in your own home didn’t burden her free exercise (of religion) rights at all,” Taub said. “So we thought that was an egregious error of law, and we got involved to try to overturn that.”
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