Supreme Court blocks NY from enforcing Covid limits on churches
Good, it's about time! And now I hope many others follow suit to protect their rights.
Not surprising that Roberts votes with the left - but looks like Amy Coney Barrett has made her presence known already - or this would be going back to the lower court. Not today!
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Supreme Court blocks NY from enforcing Covid limits on churches
The U.S. Supreme Court issued an injunction late Wednesday blocking New York’s governor from enforcing 10- and 25-person occupancy limits on religious institutions, granting a request from the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and Agudath Israel.
The state had told the court there was no need to act because the restrictions, which were adopted as a way to try to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, had recently been dialed back.
The court apparently divided 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissenting.
In an unsigned majority opinion, the court said the restrictions would violate religious freedom and are not neutral because they “single out houses of worship for especially harsh treatment.”
While religious institutions were affected, businesses categorized as essential could admit as many people as they wish, the court said, and the list of such businesses included acupuncture facilities and others the court said were not essential.
The court said there’s no evidence that the organizations that brought the lawsuit have contributed to the spread of Covid-19.
In his dissent, Roberts said he saw no need to take this action, because the state has revised the designations of the affected areas, and none of the houses of worship that sought relief now face numerical restrictions and can hold services up to 50 percent capacity.
Breyer said if the state seeks to reimpose the limits, the plaintiffs can come back to the court. Sotomayor and Kagan said granting the injunction “will only exacerbate the nation’s suffering.”
Both Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh filed concurrences. Neither Amy Coney Barrett nor Samuel Alito filed separate opinions.
During a briefing call with reporters on Thanksgiving morning, Cuomo shrugged off the court's move.
"The Supreme Court ruling on the religious gatherings is more illustrative of the Supreme Court than anything else .... This was really just an opportunity for the court to express its philosophy and its politics. It doesn't have any practical effects," he said.
Cuomo, echoing Roberts' dissent, said that the entire case was moot because the restrictions in the particular zone in Brooklyn no longer exist. He said the case will now go back to a lower court.
"The decision isn’t final. Second, it didn’t affect our mass gathering rules. So it didn’t mention those. It didn’t mention the overall limits," said Cuomo, who questioned why the court ruled "on an issue that is moot?”
President Donald Trump reacted Thursday morning by commenting on a tweet from a Supreme Court case tracking site about the ruling. "Happy Thanksgiving," he wrote.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...rches-n1249079
Major shift at Supreme Court on Covid-19 orders
The Supreme Court voted 5-4 to bar New York state from reimposing limits on religious gatherings.
The Supreme Court signaled a major shift in its approach to coronavirus-related restrictions late Wednesday, voting 5-4 to bar New York state from reimposing limits on religious gatherings.
The emergency rulings, issued just before midnight, were the first significant indication of a rightward shift in the court since President Donald Trump’s newest appointee — Justice Amy Coney Barrett — last month filled the seat occupied by liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in September.
In May and July, the Supreme Court narrowly rejected challenges to virus-related restrictions on churches in California and Nevada, with Chief Justice John Roberts joining the court’s Democratic appointees to stress that state and local governments required flexibility to deal with a dangerous and evolving pandemic.
But support on the high court for those rulings shrank with Ginsburg’s death. Wednesday night’s orders granting emergency relief to Roman Catholic churches and to Jewish congregations in New York demonstrated, as many suspected, that Barrett would side with the court’s most conservative justices in insisting on greater accommodation for religion even as the pandemic is again surging.
“Stemming the spread of COVID–19 is unquestionably a compelling interest, but it is hard to see how the challenged regulations can be regarded as ‘narrowly tailored,'” the court wrote in an unsigned opinion. “They are far more restrictive than any COVID–related regulations that have previously come before the Court, much tighter than those adopted by many other jurisdictions hard-hit by the pandemic, and far more severe than has been shown to be required to prevent the spread of the virus at the applicants’ services.”
Barrett did not write a separate opinion in the two New York cases, but the orders signaled that she was part of the majority backing the court’s controlling, unsigned opinion.
Rest - https://www.politico.com/news/2020/1...barrett-440808
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