The Public Health Department for the City of Madison and Dane County, Wisconsin put out a new “Forward Dane” order today, removing a 50-person cap on in-person religious services that did not apply to any similar secular activities. The new order came after the Roman Catholic Diocese of Madison stood up for its right to free exercise of religion. Global law firms Sidley Austin and Troutman Sanders, along with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty sent a letter to Dane County Executive Joe Parisi, Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway, and Public Health Director Janel Heinrich on Wednesday, June 3. The letter explained that Madison/Dane County’s arbitrary 50-person cap on houses of worship violated the First Amendment as well as the Wisconsin Constitution. Because the Diocese stood up for its rights, Catholic churches in Madison/Dane County will now conduct in-person Masses at the same 25 percent capacity level as secular activities such as malls and theaters, but with even more rigorous social distancing and hygiene protocols.As we've begun to see, secular authorities do back down, if only after stubborn resistance, when steady pressure is applied. In a related development, the Michigan Supreme Court has vacated the order of a lower court telling Karl Manke, the barber who reopened his shop in violation of "social distancing" orders, to close.
The Michigan Supreme canceled Friday a lower court's order that demanded Karl Manke immediately close his Owosso barbershop and sent Manke's case back to the state Court of Appeals for further consideration.While the appeals court now has to rehear the case, I assume this process will take weeks or months, during which time the matter will become moot, absurd, or both.The [unanimous] decision by the state's high court came with only a concurring opinion written by Justice David Viviano in which he questioned initial handling of the case by a three-judge appeals court panel.
. . . Manke's attorney, David Kallman, appealed to the Michigan Supreme Court. And Manke has continued cutting hair.
On Friday, the Supreme Court vacated or revoked the orders from last week and sent the case back to the Michigan Court of Appeals for fuller consideration.
I go along with Edward Feser here, in that we're talking about related natural-law issues in both these cases, the right to freedom of worship and the right to earn a living. We seem to be passing through a national (if not a Western world) hiccup of hysteria in which elites have tried to stampede a social consensus that will tolerate a suspension of those rights.
With others, I'm slowly re-emerging from house arrest. I got a haircut last Monday and discovered that Dr Barbara Ferrer, the social-justice health director for LA County, has ordered that not only must barbers wear masks and gloves, but the customers must wear masks and gloves as well. Walking down the sidewalk to the barber shop, I saw that everyone I passed ostentatiously went out of their way to retain six feet of "social distance", which was an ongoing strange dance.
I assume we'll slowly begin to realize how much of this has been a silly charade.
