The Court’s Religious Conservatives are Failing Church & State
In a decision issued during the relative quiet of a Friday evening, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority overturned California’s pandemic-related restrictions on private religious gatherings involving more than three households. They terminated the public health measure with what a U.S. Marine might describe as “extreme prejudice.”
The unsigned opinion took the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to task for its earlier decision upholding the restrictions. “This is the fifth time the court has summarily rejected the Ninth Circuit’s analysis of California’s Covid restrictions on religious exercise,” the justices wrote. Their annoyance with those who might favor the public health over its need for close religious instruction is duly noted.
The argument backed by the court’s conservative majority was that California had treated secular activities like going to a hair salon more favorably than at-home religious exercise. Which is nonsense. You can split that hair ten ways from Sunday and still not arrive at a workable conclusion.
Justice Elena Kagan said as much in her dissent. “The law does not require that the state equally treat apples and watermelons,” she wrote, describing the difficulty of ranking the day-to-day activities of a diverse nation on the basis of constitutional necessity.
