A Jewish man named Daniel hosted a prayer meeting in his house, but local authorities didn’t like it. They forbade the prayer meeting from happening. They sent police to watch his house. His neighbors didn’t like his Jewish beliefs either, so they joined the authorities in snooping on him. This may sound like the persecution of the Old Testament prophet, who nearly became lion food under a draconian law in the ancient dictatorship of the Persian Empire. But it actually describes the experience of Daniel Grand, a Jewish resident in post-COVID Ohio.

In January 2021, while much of the country still groaned under ineffectual mask mandates, Grand, an orthodox Jew, tried to start a Sabbath prayer meeting in his home in affluent University Heights, a Cleveland suburb. The local authorities responded with a cease-and-desist letter, followed by police cruisers patrolling his street to ensure the order was followed.

The mayor even encouraged neighbors to watch the Grand home to see whether Jews were gathering inside, and one obliged by aiming a surveillance camera at his house. “City officials demanded architectural drawings of his home, issued property citations, withheld his certificate of occupancy, and, at times, refused to collect his trash,” summarized American Enterprise Institute fellow Edward Blum and Mattathias Project cofounder Rabbi Cary Kozberg.

At a commission meeting, one neighbor indiscreetly revealed the true reason for opposing Grand’s prayer meeting, saying, “I am not Jewish, and I do not want our neighborhood labeled as Jewish.”

Why would the prayer meeting make the neighborhood seem Jewish? Because orthodox Jews don’t drive on Saturday, all the attendees would walk to Grand’s house. But this fact simply makes it less of a nuisance; the gathering would feature no additional traffic, parking, or noise to disturb the residential repose of the neighborhood.

It’s hard to ignore the overt parallels between the experiences of Daniel Grand and Daniel the prophet. In the reign of Darius, Persian officials who were jealous at Daniel’s success “sought to find a ground for complaint against Daniel” but concluded, “We shall not find any ground for complaint against this Daniel unless we find it in connection with the law of his God” (Daniel 6:4-5). So, they contrived a law banning prayer (6:7) and conspired to find Daniel in the act of praying (6:11) in his own house (6:10)! Those officials famously threw Daniel to the lions (6:16), but God protected him (6:22).

Fortunately, the city of University Heights has no lion’s den for insubordinate Jews. Under the Eighth Amendment, anti-Semitic local officials may only pursue their vendettas with pettiness. (Refusing to collect his trash, really?)

Furthermore, in America, victims like Daniel Grand may challenge unjust actions against them in a court of law, whereas there was no appeal from the law of the Medes and Persians (Daniel 6:12). “Grand’s complaint alleges that the city has enforced its permit requirement against home gatherings of Orthodox Jews and no one else — poker and bridge games, book clubs, game nights, and sorority and fraternity gatherings were never targeted for enforcement,” write Blum and Kozberg. “And treating religious activities worse than secular activities is something that the Constitution does not tolerate.”

However, Grand already lost twice, both at the district level and before the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Sixth Circuit ruled that Grand’s case was not “ripe” because the city had not issued a final administrative ruling against him.

Grand appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which will hear the case (Grand v. City of University Heights, Ohio) in its upcoming term. Specifically, the court will decide whether “a credible government threat that deters the exercise of fundamental rights … is displaced by” the administrative “finality requirement.” In other words, in cases with clear evidence of government hostility to religion, must a person wait until receiving a final “no” from that governmental entity before bringing a federal lawsuit?

If the court decides that a finality agreement is required, the danger is that local governments could simply drown residents in delays and red tape, so that their religious discrimination complaints can never receive a court hearing.

“A right that cannot be vindicated until the government that violated it finishes its paperwork is mere toleration (if not intolerance), not liberty,” Blum and Kozberg argue.

But the U.S. Constitution is (or should be) better than that, as President George Washington declared in an August 1790 letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island. “The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation,” Washington wrote. “All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights.”

“The Government of the United States,” Washington continued, “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance,” and it “requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens.”

Peaceable assembly in a private home for purposes of prayer is practically the best possible behavior for a citizen, and University Heights, Ohio allegedly tried to punish Daniel Grand for trying it. Then again, Daniel the prophet was also a model subject, and he was thrown to the lions.

Thus, the Jews in exile have always been persecuted. God sent an angel to close the lions’ mouths, and Daniel’s opponents faced the fate they hoped to inflict on him. In the case of Daniel Grand, God may use the Supreme Court to play the same protective, reversing role.