Supreme Court Stops New York Restrictions On Churches And Synagogues

This is being widely covered, for instance here, so I'm not going to go into specifics. On one hand, this is something that should have been done last May, when the court refused to hear similar California cases, at least psrtly on the basis that Gov Newsom loosened the restrictions once the suits were brought.

But that didn't deal with the reality that all such restrictions are subject to the governor's whim,. and six weeks later, Newsom simply reimposed the restrictions he'd lifted. Chief Justice Roberts in his dissent from the new ruling said that Cuomo had lifted the strictest restrictions as soon as the suit was filed, but the majority recognized that Cuomo, like Newsom, could pull the same ploy and issued an injunction against enforcing them, whether he'd temporarily lifted them or not.

For the court to deal with this has been overdue, since such extreme restrictions are in force elsewhee. The court''s decision noted inconsistencies in capacity limits for houses of worship vis-a-v9is other indoor activities. Whether this line of reasoning can be applied to other cases remains to be se4n.

In addition, the court noted that the houses of worship had not seen COVID cases under the prior, looser restrictions. This is one argument that the California megachurches that have not followed the governor's directives have made: for months, with thousands attending church services without social distancing, there has been negligible transmission. Whether this will affect their legal cases remains to be seen.

But at least this is a belated start.

The Thomas More Society has brought a very similar motion for injunctive relief to the Supreme Court in a New Jersey case. The New York restrictions were much more extreme -- limits of 10 or 25 attendees -- while the New Jersey restrictions are more common in other states, 25% of capacity up to a numerical limit. But the suit alleges that churches are being held to different standards from other activities.

We'll have to see what develops.