We'll send the piles of church wackos with the bullhorns to your neighborhood then.

The free exercise of my religion involves not putting up with constant crowds, noise, trash and cars in my own neighborhood from people that don't even live there. You can't just do whatever the hell you want because you label it "religion".

And the right to assembly can go to far. Here in LA they allow known criminals to hold big assemblies in LA that block traffic for hours and disrupt businesses and instead of arresting the criminals, the cops manage the crowds so they can have their protest against the government.

A church is a building (business even) that is used primarily for religious purposes. It has to be in a location zoned for churches. They just need a zoning certificate to exist in their location.

A religious assembly is when two or more people assemble for religious purposes. This can happen anywhere, even in a private residence. It is not controlled by zoning laws.

The problem the county will have with their case is trying to control behaviour on private property. They can control some negatives that might accompany a religious assembly but they can't ban religious assemblies outright. The law is going to side with the couple on this matter because the county seems to have no leg to stand on. The Constitution will kick their legs right out from under them.

In order to regulate you need some definition of what you are regulating. If you have a Pastor, weekly meetings , etc. you may fall under that definition. Unfortunately perhaps. I'm not sure the evidence will show this particular group falls just outside the defintion or in.

Well, the thing is, the way this case was presented to us it sounds as though the county has done a terrible and completely unreasonable thing, and yet we have virtually no details of what transpired.

It has happened in the past that police, city, county, and state officials have made bad decisions and acted improperly, and that might be what happened here, but I don't have all the information I need to decide whether the action to require a permit is justified or not. This is why I raised some questions that I believed were pertinent to the reasonableness of the demand.

There is presumably some line, somewhere, that divides a religious assembly among "a few friends" from a full-blown commercial church building with incumbent traffic and parking problems and occupancy violations and fire hazards of safety concern to the local Fire Marshall, and questions about any food preparation for the public meeting safety standards. The neighbors might be disturbed by the loss of parking on the street or the heavy increase in traffic, or perhaps noise and light on a nightly basis that one would not expect from a residence, or the appearance of the home if it is trapped up and tricked out with signs and advertising posters.

Or it might actually be a pot-smoker's and drinker's gambling and swinging club, where dozen's of people drive up every night to play loud drunken card games, hoot and holler on weeknights, and generally make the lives of neighbors a misery and a danger, and then they just pretend it's a religious assembly as a cover.

Or it might really be just 2 or 3 quiet couples, car-pooling in together once a week to have a potluck supper and hushed readings of Bible passages, in which case San Diego would be clearly in the wrong.

I'd like to know what, precisely, triggered this action from San Diego to see if they really just acted out of the blue to violate these people's right to assemble and their free practice of religion, or if there are additional details we haven't heard that would influence our opinions in one way or the other. Perhaps starting with: How the hell did San Diego even know a quiet prayer meeting was going on in a private home? If it was really only a couple of people, who told San Diego, and what did they say to convince someone to come down and check it out?

I wonder why San Diego showed up too. Could be anything from what deifan suggested to too many cars to the bright light of God shining down on the prayer group disturbing sleepers. The problem I see right now is San Diego isn't offering any scenario to defend themselves. Maybe they are just silent because of an ongoing investigation. That would be my bet anyway.