The best-informed and most even-handed coverage seems to be here.
Earlier this month the church asked the justices to issue an order that would allow it to hold in-person worship services with as many as 90 people while it challenges the COVID-19 shutdown order issued by the state’s Democratic governor, Steve Sisolak. The order discriminates against places of worship, the church argued, because it limits services there to a maximum of 50 people while allowing casinos, gyms, bars and restaurants to operate at 50% of capacity. The church stressed that it is willing to comply with rules regarding masks and social distancing (both of which were largely absent from a photo included in the church’s brief, taken at a crowded Las Vegas casino on June 4); all that it was asking, it emphasized, was to be treated the same as everyone else.The court majority that denied the injunction did not issue any opinion, while the dissents by the conservative justices were generally predictable. As a result, it's hard to know what might happen in the California cases likely to reach the court in the near future. In general, the court seems inclined to give local authorities broad authority to enforce temporary emergency orders, provided the reasons for any differing treatment of churches are remotely credible. It's hard to disagree with this.The state pushed back against the church’s suggestion that casinos and churches should be treated the same. Unlike houses of worship, the state noted, casinos are “highly regulated” industries that face “significant punishment” if they do not comply with COVID-19 restrictions and can be shut down quickly during a second wave of the pandemic. Indeed, the state continued, under the COVID-19 restrictions religious services receive better treatment than similar mass gatherings like lectures, concerts, sporting events and plays. And in any event, the state concluded, Calvary could accommodate its entire congregation if it wanted to, simply by holding more services.
The First Amendment of the US Constitution reads, in part, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. . ." This is extended to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment. If a state passes a law specifically restricting religion, there's no problem. The difficulty seems to be in extra-legal administrative rules, emergency orders, executive actions, and the like that are meant to be temporary and have not passed through a legislative process.
It's unlikely that present circumstances will result in a case that presents a clear set of facts that can bring about a landmark decision, and my position here has always been that it's unrealistic to expect a court case to become a magic bullet that will solve the religious freedom issue for COVID-19, especially since the March-May lockdowns restricted natural and constitutional rights beyond just religious freedom.
The electoral process will be important as voters recognize that one party seems more aligned toward the protection of natural rights, while another is willing to limit natural rights to satisfy particular constituencies. Beyond that, we shouldn't minimize the effect of an enraged citizenry that finds restrictions on haircuts or de facto closing of schools intolerable, leaving church services aside. As I said yesterday, we're still in an early stage of working out the remedies.
Our pastor said in this week's bulletin,
So, what’s happening here? From the letter of James in the New Testament: “My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance.” Joy?? This brings to my mind the sufferings of St. Paul and how he endured all of his challenges with a smile on his face. Ahem … me? I got a long way to go.
