Attorney Jeremy Morris, known as the “Christmas lawyer,” has appealed to the Supreme Court to review his feud with the HOA regarding a Christmas display.
In 2015, Morris organized a five-day light show that attracted thousands of attendees to his former home in Idaho. The display included a live nativity, a children’s choir, and a camel. The HOA alleged the event involved religious discrimination. Prior to the event, the HOA said the display would violate its community policies regarding the event’s size, noise level, and brightness.
Peter Smith, an attorney for the HOA, told Fox News the case “does not warrant the Court’s attention given it is an isolated dispute between a homeowner and a homeowners association.”
Morris said of the filing: “Who would have thought that nine Justices of the United States Supreme Court are about to sit down over Christmas and read a legal case involving a fundraiser to help families with children suffering from cancer that involves Dolly the Camel, 700,000 Christmas lights, a children’s choir and the REAL SANTA CLAUS testifying in federal court.”
“The right to celebrate Christmas in accordance with our family’s faith traditions, to use our property to express that Christian faith tradition, and the right to have a unanimous jury verdict protected after 15 hours of deliberations — all are at the core of Constitutional protections and 250 years of American jurisprudence,” he explained.
Morris sued the HOA after neighbors allegedly harassed display visitors and threatened his family. Although the jury sided with Morris, Judge B. Lynn Winmill ordered the lawyer to pay more than $111,000 in attorney fees to the HOA. He ruled the case did not concern religious discrimination, but violated community rules.
In 2020, Morris brought the case to the 9th Circuit. The three-judge circuit upheld Winmill’s decision. The panel noted, however, that the HOA’s action was “motivated at least in part by the Morisses’ religious expression.”