For the first time in generations, beachgoers were out on the sand in a New Jersey shore community on the Sunday morning before Memorial Day as a Christian religious group fights the state over its regular beach closures there during Sunday services.
” The association is a nonprofit Christian entity that owns the beach and the land under all of Ocean Grove’s houses under a charter given to it by the state in 1870. In court papers, it says what the state is trying to do violates U.S. constitutional amendments concerning freedom of religion, the taking of private property, and due process and equal protection.