Pandemic restrictions on religious practices struck down
Supreme Court rules 5-4 against Calif. on household gatherings
WASHINGTON — In another late-night ruling, the Supreme Court on Friday blocked another California coronavirus restriction on religious gatherings, saying the state’s limits on home-based Bible study and prayer sessions violated constitutional rights.
The 5-4 vote on an emergency petition illustrates how a new majority on the court — with Justice Amy Coney Barrett playing a decisive role — is now in control when the court considers whether pandemic-related restrictions cross the line to endanger religious rights.
Constitutional protections are implicated any time a state treats “any comparable secular activity more favorably than religious exercise,” the majority wrote. “It is no answer that a state treats some comparable secular businesses or other activities as poorly as or even less favorably than the religious exercise at issue.”
In this case, the majority said, gatherings of more than three households were banned at prayer meetings in homes even though California permits “hair salons, retail stores, personal care services, movie theaters, private suites at sporting events and concerts, and indoor restaurants to bring together more than three households at a time.”
The opinion was unsigned, but the majority
was composed of Barrett and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.
Chief Justice John Roberts indicated the court should not have granted the emergency petition challenging the restrictions but did not explain his reasoning. Justice Elena Kagan wrote a biting dissent for the court’s liberals.
The First Amendment requires a state to
treat religious conduct as well as it treats comparable secular conduct, Kagan wrote.
California “does exactly that,” she wrote, adding that it adopted a blanket restriction on home gatherings to three households, “religious and secular alike.”
“California need not, as the [majority] insists, treat at-home religious gatherings the same as hardware stores and hair salons — and thus unlike at-home secular gatherings, the obvious comparator here,” Kagan wrote.
“The law does not require that the state equally treat apples and watermelons,” she wrote, joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor.
The challenge was brought by Santa Clara County pastors Jeremy Wong and Karen Busch, who said the restrictions prevented their usual weekly Bible study and prayer sessions. The pair “sincerely believe assembling for small-group, ‘house church’ fellowship is just as indispensable to their faith as attending Mass is for a Catholic,” they said in their petition to the court.
The issue of when state restrictions put in place to curb the pandemic unfairly limit religious activity has sharply divided the court.
Before the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Roberts and liberal justices formed a majority that generally left the issue up to elected officials, saying judges don’t have the expertise or power to overrule decisions made with the public’s health in mind.
After the death of the liberal Ginsburg and the confirmation of the conservative Barrett to her seat on the court, the dynamic shifted. The new majority struck limitations on religious services in New York and has continued that pattern since.