{"id":226418,"date":"2021-04-14T01:52:32","date_gmt":"2021-04-13T22:52:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/covid-cant-unfairly-let-pols-treat-believers-like-second-class-citizens\/"},"modified":"2021-04-14T01:52:32","modified_gmt":"2021-04-13T22:52:32","slug":"covid-cant-unfairly-let-pols-treat-believers-like-second-class-citizens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/covid-cant-unfairly-let-pols-treat-believers-like-second-class-citizens\/","title":{"rendered":"#COVID can\u2019t unfairly let pols treat believers like second-class citizens"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#COVID can\u2019t unfairly let pols treat believers like second-class citizens<\/strong>”
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When Christians met in each other\u2019s homes for prayer or Bible study, they had to be careful. Such gatherings were illegal, and the organizers never knew who might inform the authorities.<\/p>\n

Although that sounds like a scene from the Soviet Union, it in fact describes the situation in California under COVID-19 regulations that the Supreme Court\u00a0blocked<\/a>\u00a0last Friday. By issuing an\u00a0injunction<\/a>\u00a0against Gov. Gavin News<\/a>om\u2019s restrictions, the Supremes reaffirmed that politicians must comply with the Constitution when they decide how to deal with a pandemic.<\/p>\n

The main rule at issue in\u00a0this case\u00a0limited at-home religious gatherings, whether inside or outside, to people from no more than three households. If two people from different households joined a host for a prayer meeting or Bible study session, for example, no one else was allowed to come.<\/p>\n

As the petitioners\u00a0noted, that limit \u201cdoes not permit an individual to gather with others in her own backyard to study the Bible, pray or worship with members of more than two other households, all of which are common (and deeply important) practices of millions of contemporary Christians in the United States.\u201d\u00a0Meanwhile, California was allowing much larger groups to gather in other settings: inside stores, barbershops, nail salons, tattoo parlors, movie studios and (in some counties) restaurants, for example \u2014 or outdoors at restaurants, wineries, gyms, movie theaters, zoos, museums, sporting events, concerts, political demonstrations, weddings and funerals.<\/p>\n

The upshot was that Californians could \u201csit for a haircut with 10 other people in a barbershop, eat in a half-full restaurant (with members of 20 different families) or ride with 15 other people on a city bus.\u201d But they were not allowed to \u201chost three people from different households for a Bible study indoors or in their backyards.\u201d<\/p>\n

Justice Elena Kagan, who objected to the Supreme Court\u2019s injunction in a\u00a0dissent\u00a0joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, argued that the Golden State\u2019s regulations did not implicate the First Amendment to the US Constitution, because they were neutral and general<\/a>ly app<\/a>licable. The state \u201chas adopted a blanket restriction on at-home gatherings of all kinds, religious and secular alike,\u201d she noted.<\/p>\n

The petitioners argued that Newsom\u2019s rules nevertheless amounted to \u201ca subtle but unmistakable religious gerrymander.\u201d Five justices were inclined to agree, concluding that the plaintiffs were likely to prevail in their claim that the restrictions on private religious meetings violated the First Amendment.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the first time that the high court has called attention to the impact of COVID-19 control measures on religious freedom. It\u00a0blocked\u00a0enforcement of Gov. Andrew Cuomo\u2019s onerous restrictions on houses of worship in New York last November,\u00a0vacated\u00a0a decision upholding Colorado\u2019s limits on religious services in December and reached similar conclusions in four cases involving\u00a0state\u00a0and\u00a0local\u00a0regulations in California two months later.<\/p>\n

By now, the court\u00a0said, it should be clear that public-health regulations are subject to strict scrutiny \u201cwhenever they treat any comparable secular activity more favorably than religious exercise,\u201d and that the relevant consideration is \u201cthe risks various activities pose, not the reasons why people gather.\u201d To pass strict scrutiny, a state has to \u201cshow that measures less restrictive of the First Amendment activity\u201d \u2014 such as face masks, physical distancing and more generous group limits \u2014 \u201ccould not address its interest in reducing the spread of COVID.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kagan is certainly right, based on the court\u2019s\u00a0pre-pandemic\u00a0precedents, that disease-control measures can be constitutional even if they incidentally impinge on religious freedom. But Kagan, Breyer and Sotomayor always seem willing to accept politicians\u2019 public-health judgments, even when they are\u00a0scientifically dubious, change\u00a0in the midst of litigation or result in policies that\u00a0privilege\u00a0politically influential industries or\u00a0explicitly treat\u00a0religious gatherings as a disfavored category.<\/p>\n

At this point, it isn\u2019t clear that Kagan and her allies on the high court can imagine any<\/em> disease-control policy that would violate the Free Exercise Clause, provided it was presented as necessary for the protection of public health, as such policies always are.<\/p>\n

Twitter<\/a>: @JacobSullum<\/em>\n <\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#COVID can\u2019t unfairly let pols treat believers like second-class citizens” When Christians met in each other\u2019s homes for prayer or Bible study, they had to be careful. Such gatherings were illegal, and the organizers never knew who might inform the authorities. Although that sounds like a scene from the Soviet Union, it in fact describes…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":226419,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/03\/church-membership-down-03.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[101837,1545,67243,71126,71404],"class_list":["post-226418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-4-13-21","tag-coronavirus","tag-lockdown","tag-politicians","tag-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}