The governor called it heartbreaking, but the state legislature said it was lawbreaking. As Kansas tries to contain its growing number of COVID-19 cases, Gov. Laura Kelly on Tuesday extended her executive order banning public gatherings of 10 or more people to church services and funerals. The Democrat said the order “brings me the greatest sadness” of any she has issued in her time as governor, but it was necessary. Not so, said the Republican-controlled legislature, which voted to overturn the executive action.

Police officers said they arrested pro-life activist David Benham on Saturday because he was violating North Carolina’s stay-at-home order. Benham and a small group of other activists were counseling women entering an abortion facility. Police also arrested seven others who refused to leave the area, WBTV in Charlotte reported.

Henry Fernandez doesn’t like preaching to an empty room and a camera: “Here I am in this small sanctuary with six people, and I’m trying to ignore the camera and speak normally, and that has been a real challenge for me.”

Though the situation makes him anxious, Fernandez, who pastors Bryce Avenue Presbyterian Church, a Presbyterian Church in America congregation in Los Alamos, N.M., said the decision whether to obey the state’s ban on public gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic was straightforward.

While church leaders across the United States scrambled to organize online worship services in mid-March, pastor Rodney Howard-Browne told a large crowd gathered in his Tampa church why he would never cancel public gatherings: “This Bible school is open because we’re raising up revivalists, not pansies.”

With New York City engulfed by the coronavirus, Mayor Bill de Blasio on Friday pleaded with congregations not to gather for worship—and threatened severe repercussions if they did.

Authorities in Tampa, Fla., did not like what they saw on Sunday on The River church’s worship service livestream: a sanctuary full of congregants. Police arrested Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne on Monday for violating an order to limit gatherings to 10 people because of the COVID-19 outbreak. But the church and its attorneys say the livestream didn’t show the safety measures in place such as placing family groups 6 feet apart in the auditorium, having staff members wear gloves, giving each attendee hand sanitizer, and using a $100,000 air purifying system.

As pastors and religious leaders across the country faced tough decisions about whether to hold worship services over the weekend, Pacific Justice Institute President Brad Dacus gathered 500 of them on a conference call on Thursday. They talked about how to keep their ministries going and whether shelter-in-place orders and other restrictions on public gatherings violated the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.