U.S. Supreme Court delivered major win for religious liberty

AlwaysWrite

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With three new Trump appointees, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a major win for religious liberty this week, when it struck down Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s pandemic order unfairly restricting the size of religious gatherings in New York.

All of Trump’s appointees (Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett) voted to uphold the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty in the 5-4 decision.

Justice Gorsuch summed it up this way: “While the pandemic poses many grave challenges, there is no world in which the Constitution tolerates color-coded executive edicts that reopen liquor stores and bike shops but shutter churches, synagogues, and mosques.”


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Supreme Court Blocks Covid-19 Restrictions on Religious Services in New York

By Jess Bravin

A divided Supreme Court blocked New York from imposing strict limits on attendance at religious services to combat Covid-19, with new Justice Amy Coney Barrett casting the pivotal vote to depart from past cases that deferred to state authorities on public-health measures.

In orders issued late Wednesday, the court, in a 5-4 vote, set aside attendance limits that Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo imposed on houses of worship in areas most severely affected by the coronavirus: 10 people in red zones and 25 in orange zones. New York classifies places where coronavirus infections are of increasing severity as yellow, orange or red.

Chief Justice John Roberts and three liberal justices dissented.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and Agudath Israel of America, an Orthodox Jewish organization, alleged that the limits violated their First Amendment rights of religious exercise.

The Supreme Court’s unsigned majority opinion found that the religious plaintiffs were likely to prevail and, overruling federal courts in New York, suspended the governor’s orders while the litigation proceeds.

The court found it troubling that businesses that the state considered essential weren’t subject to the same occupancy limits. Those included “things such as acupuncture facilities, campgrounds, garages, as well as many whose services are not limited to those that can be regarded as essential, such as all plants manufacturing chemicals and microelectronics and all transportation facilities,” the court said.

“Members of this Court are not public health experts, and we should respect the judgment of those with special expertise and responsibility in this area,” the opinion said. But New York’s restrictions “strike at the very heart of the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty.”

In addition to Justice Barrett, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh—who had dissented when the court rejected previous church challenges to Covid-19 regulations—made up the majority.

In their dissents, the chief justice argued the court’s action was unnecessary, and the liberal justices said the court shouldn’t interfere with public-health authorities.

Gov. Cuomo on Thursday said the Supreme Court ruling had no effect on the state’s virus-control efforts, and pertained only to a specific Brooklyn red zone that was no longer under such restrictions.

“It’s irrelevant from any practical impact because the zone that they were talking about has already been moot,” Mr. Cuomo said on a conference call with reporters. “I think this was really just an opportunity for the court to express its philosophy and politics.”

Beyond its immediate impact on New York, the Thanksgiving eve decision exposed fissures within the court over the pandemic response, with justices filing six separate opinions on their reasoning. And it suggested that President Trump’s appointment of Justice Barrett already had reduced the influence of Chief Justice Roberts.

In recent years, the chief justice played a mediating role between two four-member conservative and liberal blocs on the court. He typically adopted conservative legal principles, but voted for procedural reasons with liberal justices in several high-profile cases. With Justice Barrett adding weight to the conservative wing, Chief Justice Roberts may find fewer opportunities for that balancing act.

At issue is whether the occupancy caps on religious congregations were more severe than those of comparable activities. The plaintiffs contended that they faced stricter limits than businesses New York classified as essential, such as grocery stores, laundromats and auto mechanics.

The state argued that its rules already treated houses of worship more favorably than activities it considered comparable, such as lectures, concerts, cinemas and sporting events, which are completely shut in high-risk zones.

Wednesday’s order marked the most dramatic shift since Justice Barrett succeeded Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in September. In previous cases where churches contested Covid-19-related occupancy limits, Justice Ginsburg joined with three other liberal justices and Chief Justice Roberts in deferring to the judgment of public-health authorities, over the dissent of four more conservative justices.

Justice Barrett didn’t issue an opinion of her own or join separate concurring opinions issued by fellow Trump appointees Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.

Justice Gorsuch’s opinion stingingly criticized the court’s previous approach.

“It is time—past time—to make plain that, while the pandemic poses many grave challenges, there is no world in which the Constitution tolerates color-coded executive edicts that reopen liquor stores and bike shops but shutter churches, synagogues, and mosques,” he wrote.

Justice Gorsuch argued that a 1905 precedent that underlies much of public-health law, Jacobson v. Massachusetts, which upheld a measure mandating smallpox vaccinations, improperly had been read to justify some of the state orders issued to fight Covid-19.

“Jacobson hardly supports cutting the Constitution loose during a pandemic,” he wrote.

Chief Justice Roberts had cited Jacobson in a May opinion that came to stand for the court’s previous approach to pandemic cases: deferring to the judgment of elected officials who are publicly accountable for the coronavirus response. His Wednesday dissent shot back at the Gorsuch opinion—and defended liberal colleagues from its criticism.

“I do not regard my dissenting colleagues as ‘cutting the Constitution loose during a pandemic,’ ” he wrote. “They simply view the matter differently after careful study and analysis reflecting their best efforts to fulfill their responsibility under the Constitution.”

In his dissent, Chief Justice Roberts said the court’s action was premature, because the areas involved already had been reclassified as yellow zones, which were subject to a 50% occupancy limit without a numerical limit.

Justice Kavanaugh took a more conciliatory tone with his concurring opinion, acknowledging the severity of the pandemic and suggesting the facts differed from prior public-health orders the court declined to disturb. “New York’s restrictions on houses of worship are much more severe than the California and Nevada restrictions at issue in South Bay and Calvary, and much more severe than the restrictions that most other States are imposing,” he wrote.

In separate dissents, liberal justices said the court shouldn’t interfere with public-health authorities, who are responding to a pandemic that has killed more than 250,000 Americans, including more than 16,000 in New York City.

Justice Stephen Breyer acknowledged that the occupancy limits interfere with religious observance, but said that in light of the public-health risks, they may be justified.

“The virus is transmitted from person to person through respiratory droplets produced when a person or group of people talk, sing, cough, or breathe near each other,” he wrote, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

“The nature of the epidemic, the spikes, the uncertainties, and the need for quick action, taken together, mean that the State has countervailing arguments based upon health, safety, and administrative considerations that must be balanced against the applicants’ First Amendment challenges,” he wrote.

Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justice Kagan, criticized the majority for invoking as evidence of potential religious discrimination Mr. Cuomo’s public comments about coronavirus spikes in New York’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities.

Why, she asked, had some of the same justices refused to consider Mr. Trump’s public comments about Muslims when upholding his travel ban in 2018. “President Trump had described the [policy] as a ‘Muslim Ban,’ ” she observed.

“Justices of this Court play a deadly game in second guessing the expert judgment of health officials about the environments in which a contagious virus, now infecting a million Americans each week, spreads most easily,” Justice Sotomayor wrote.

Several other religious congregations have filed applications seeking to block occupancy limits since Justice Barrett joined the court last month.
 

sevenpin63

Addicted Member
Here I think the supreme Court did the right thing. The Constitution is the Constitution, follow it.
To many politicians think they are above the law.
 
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