Judge backs Newsom on church limits
A federal judge says Gov. Gavin Newsom’s shutdown of indoor worship services in most of California is a valid measure to protect public health and protects religious freedom by allowing outdoor services, unlike the New York restrictions struck down by the U. S. Supreme Court.
Harvest Rock Church of Pasadena and Harvest International Ministry, affiliated with 162 California churches, argued that Newsom’s orders violated the constitutional standards set by the high court in its Nov. 25 ruling on the New York case.
After President Trump’s appointment of Amy Coney Barrett to succeed the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Supreme Court re
jected the reasoning of its May 30 decision allowing an earlier version of Newsom’s limits on indoor worship services and barred New York state from restricting religious activities more tightly than secular businesses. A panel of the Ninth U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals cited that ruling Dec. 15 when it ordered Nevada’s governor to remove a 50person limit on indoor religious services.
But U. S. District Judge Jesus Bernal of Riverside, ordered to review Newsom’s current restrictions under the Supreme Court’s standards, said Monday the governor’s measures — now including a ban on indoor religious services in all counties except Mariposa, Sierra and Alpine — are justified and nondiscriminatory.
“The state has a compelling interest in curbing the spread of what is now the world’s deadliest infectious disease,” Bernal said. “This is why it is safer for individuals to be farther apart as opposed to closer together. This is why outdoor gatherings are safer than indoor gatherings. This is why singing and shouting, which expel more viral droplets, are riskier activities than sitting silently.”
Under Newsom’s Aug. 28 orders, Bernal said, religious institutions “may gather as many worshipers in person as they please for outdoor services,” the same standard that applies to theaters and restaurants, and are less restrictive than the rules for public parks.
And the stayathome orders Newsom issued this month, banning nearly all social gatherings, indoors or outdoors, in counties where hospital intensivecare units are nearly full, still allow outdoor religious services, Bernal said.
“Californians may still worship, attend services, pray and otherwise exercise their religious freedoms,” the judge said. “They just may not do so in ways that significantly increase the likelihood of transmission of a virus which has claimed more than 300,000 American lives in less than one year.
“The Constitution,” Bernal said, quoting past Supreme Court opinions, “is not a suicide pact.”
Religious groups challenging the governor’s orders have argued that indoor services, including singing and chanting, are vital to their worship and essential to religious freedom.
Last month, Calvary Baptist Church in San Jose held indoor services with gatherings exceeding the 100person limit that Newsom was then imposing, and a judge found the church and its pastor, Mike McClure, in contempt of court, with a fine of as much as $ 55,000.
The church has continued to hold indoor services this month despite a ban imposed by Santa Clara County in response to the governor’s current restrictions. County health officials asked the judge Tuesday to issue another contempt order and impose more fines.
The churches in Bernal’s court said they would appeal his decision to the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco.
“The U. S. Supreme Court has already issued its constitutional road map for houses of worship that should lead courts to find Gov. Gavin Newsom’s executive edicts violate the First Amendment,” said Mat Staver, chairman of Liberty Counsel, the conservative religious nonprofit representing the California churches. “The high court has ruled, and therefore all lower courts must obey that decision to allow houses of worship their First Amendment freedom.”