The Supreme Court overturned California’s ban on indoor church services during the pandemic and ruled that Governor Gavin Newsom’s strict orders violated the Constitution’s protection for the free exercise of religion.
The judges in a 6-3 ruling granted an appeal from a southern San Diego church, which has repeatedly challenged state restrictions on church services, including the ban on singing and singing. The ruling overturned rulings by federal judges in San Diego and San Bernardino and the 9th Circuit Court in San Francisco, which endorsed state orders despite earlier Supreme Court warnings.
But the majority said the state may limit attendance at indoor services to 25% of the building’s capacity, and singing and chanting can also be restricted.
California has enforced “the most extreme restriction on worship in the country,” Becket Fund for Religious Liberty told the court. While several states attend church service restrictions, the group said California is “the only state that bans indoor worship” in all counties except the sparsely populated counties.
The judges in the majority disagreed, but they agreed that California singled out churches for unfair treatment.
‘California is concerned that worship brings people together for too much time. Yet California does not restrict its citizens to the entry and exit of other businesses; no one is prohibited from staying in shopping malls, salons or bus terminals, ”Judge Neil M. Gorsuch wrote in one of three similar opinions.
The state’s ban on indoor services has been challenged in separate lawsuits by South Bay United Pentecostal Church in San Diego suburb of Chula Vista and Harvest Rock Church in Pasadena, and Friday’s order applies directly to them. But its legal logic would hinder the application of a similar ban to other churches.
The three liberals of the court – judges Elena Kagan, Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor – differ.
‘Judges of this court are not scientists. We also do not know much about public health policy. “Yet today the court is repressing the rulings of experts on how to respond to a raging pandemic,” Kagan wrote. “The court orders California to weaken its restrictions on public gatherings by making a special exception on worship services.”
Two months ago, Judges Newsom and the 9th Circuit noted that the state’s ban on indoor worship services may have gone too far.
On the eve of the Thanksgiving holiday, the Supreme Court rejected part of the Government of New York, Andrew Cuomo, COVID-19, which limited worship services to 25 people in a few neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens where the virus spread rapidly. . The court’s provisions “without excluding houses for worship for particularly harsh treatment” compared to shops, the court in the Roman Catholic diocese said against Cuomo.
Eight days later, the judges granted an appeal to the churches in California and ordered federal judges to reconsider their decisions, which upheld Newsom’s ban on indoor church services in all of the state’s heavily populated counties. The judges “evacuated” or set aside the rulings based on their verdict in the New York case.
But two district judges and the 9th Circuit Court upheld the state’s restrictions again at the end of January. They said California has a strong increase in COVID-19 cases, and they agreed with the state that worshipers at indoor church services have an “extraordinarily high risk” of spreading the virus because people for an hour or so was together longer.
In contrast, ‘patrons usually intend to go in and out of grocery and retail stores as quickly as possible,’ the 9th Circuit said.
Attorneys for the churches have asked the Supreme Court to file an emergency call and lift the state’s restrictions on worship services. They mention a difference of opinion from one of the senior conservatives of the 9th Circuit.
“A simple, straightforward application of these governing laws compels what the obvious result should be here: California’s uniquely severe restrictions on religious worship – including the total ban on indoor worship in almost the entire state – are apparently unconstitutional and must be determined, “Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain in Harvest Rock Church vs. Newsom written.
“California is the only state in the country that imposes such a ban,” he said, “but in exactly the same places where indoor religion is banned, California still leaves a large variety of secular facilities open inside, including (to name a few). only a few): retail stores, shopping malls, factories, food processing plants, warehouses, transport facilities, child care centers, colleges, libraries, professional sports facilities and film studios. ”
The two parties in the case differ on the current situation in Los Angeles County. Church attorneys told the court that Los Angeles County in late December said it would not apply the restrictions to church services, citing court rulings. But state attorneys said the country does not have the authority to waive state rules.