In May, when the Phoenix City Council passed a divisive new parks ordinance prohibiting unpermitted food distribution and medical treatment in city parks, advocates who work with unhoused people predicted lawsuits.
This week, that prediction panned out.
On Tuesday, a Christian Orthodox church group that feeds homeless people in a north Phoenix park once a week filed a federal lawsuit against the city over the new ordinance. St. Herman’s Table, a ministry of Exaltation of the Holy Cross Orthodox Church, and founder and minister Lance Brace are seeking a temporary restraining order against the city to prevent it from enforcing the new ordinance. It argued that the ordinance, which goes into effect today, violates the First Amendment by preventing the group from fulfilling its religious obligations of “almsgiving and evangelism.”…