Two California churches on Friday appealed to the Supreme Court for an emergency injunction against Gov. Gavin Newsom’s coronavirus restrictions, days after the state revamped its shutdown orders.
The appeal, which came in the same week a group of Catholic churches and Jewish synagogues submitted a similar petition to the Supreme Court, accuses Newsom of imposing his gathering restrictions unfairly and violating the First Amendment’s free exercise clause. The Supreme Court this summer rejected two other such petitions from churches in Nevada and California, respectively.
Newsom announced on Monday that he is pulling the “emergency brake” on the state and moving 41 of its 58 counties back into the most strict shutdown stage. The churches, Harvest Rock Church and Harvest International Ministry, both of which have campuses in affected counties, alleged that the new restrictions open a new front in their nine-month battle with Newsom.
Both churches, according to the complaint filed with the Supreme Court, said they received notice from California officials warning that violation of the restrictions, which Newsom has readjusted several times since March, could result in up to a year in prison and fines for pastors and church staff.
“Emergency relief is needed now to prevent criminalizing constitutionally protected religious exercise,” the complaint said.
At the same time, the complaint said that Newsom himself had exposed the alleged hypocrisy of his orders by dining at a well-regarded restaurant just hours before he announced the new restrictions.
“Despite his nine-month reign of executive edicts subjugating Californians to restrictions unknown to constitutional law, the Governor continues to impose draconian and unconscionable prohibitions on the daily life of all Californians that even the Governor disregards at his own whim,” the complaint said, including a picture showing a maskless Newsom seated around a large, crowded table.
Newsom has faced backlash from many churches since May, when a coalition of several thousand pastors threatened to open without his approval when the governor refused to lift his complete ban on in-person church services. The movement caught the attention of President Trump, who threatened to “override” governors who did not loosen restrictions on services.
The Supreme Court rejected both of the past requests for emergency injunctions in narrow 5-4 decisions, before Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death. At the time, Chief Justice John Roberts justified the decisions, saying that he did not think it wise to weigh in on cases, especially when the length and trajectory of the coronavirus pandemic remains unpredictable.
More recently, Justice Samuel Alito, who dissented in the two decisions, criticized his colleagues for refusing to grant emergency injunctions.
“The state’s message is this: Forget about worship and head to the slot machines,” Alito said, saying that the court failed in its duty by refusing to grant the injunction in the Nevada case.
