FALLSVILLE, Ark. – A longtime member of the Rainbow Family has sued the U.S. Forest Service, saying the counterculture group shouldn’t have to obtain a permit for its annual gatherings.
The U.S. District Court lawsuit filed by Tony Nenninger, 49, a University of Missouri at Columbia law student, challenges a rule that a group of 75 or more who gather on Forest Service land must get a special-use permit.
The Rainbow Family is meeting in the Ozark National Forest in Arkansas this year. Officials expect up to 10,000 people.
Nenninger is “a practitioner of a sincerely held religious belief that autonomous intuition of what Good Samaritan deeds do enhances miraculous karmic archangel protection for practitioners of peaceful voluntary cooperation within this life, and for perpetual evolution of religious freedom from institutional and governmental control beyond our individual lifetimes,” the lawsuit said.
Details here from the AP via the newstribune.com.