California’s attorney general on Monday urged the Supreme Court to reject a petition from a group of California churches disputing the state’s coronavirus restrictions.
In a lengthy explanation submitted to the court, Xavier Becerra defended Gov. Gavin Newsom’s coronavirus restrictions against a dispute from the churches, part of a network run by Harvest International Ministry, which have been locked in a legal battle with Newsom since July, when they sued the governor for banning singing and indoor services. Becerra said in response that now more than ever, Newsom’s restrictions on churches have become justified.
“Scientific knowledge concerning COVID-19 is rapidly developing and now provides even stronger support than before for the restrictions at issue,” he wrote. “More importantly, like many other parts of the nation, California is experiencing an unprecedented surge in COVID-19 cases, creating an even greater public health need for restrictions on prolonged communal gatherings in indoor places.”
At the same time, Becerra acknowledged that the court had last week handed New York houses of worship a massive win against Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s coronavirus orders, where in a 5-4 decision, it sided with Catholic churches and synagogues in a similar dispute. In that case, in which the houses of worship requested an injunction against Cuomo’s orders, the court ruled that by holding churches to stricter gathering limitations than businesses, New York struck “at the very heart of the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty.”
Beccera argued that the situation in California is dissimilar enough from that in New York that the court should ignore the petition for an injunction and allow a lower appeals court to deliver its own ruling. The attorney general argued that because of the nature of the coronavirus, as well as the churches’ prolonged resistance to the state’s measures, it does not have a legitimate religious liberty case. Furthermore, he wrote, research reviewed by the state supports Newsom’s decision to place heavier restrictions on churches.
“Scientific evidence also shows that the indoor activities that are subject to less stringent restrictions than worship services — such as shopping in stores or participating in workplace operations — pose a lower risk of transmission because they typically involve brief encounters between individuals rather than gatherings of large numbers of people for an extended duration of time,” Beccera wrote, defending the governor’s ban on indoor worship.
The state’s response comes about a week after the churches appealed to the Supreme Court for an injunction, citing Newsom’s own violations of his orders as an example of unequal application of his orders. Their complaint included pictures of the governor dining, maskless, indoors and surrounded by a large group of people to whom he is not related.
The attorney representing the churches, Mat Staver, president of the free speech legal nonprofit group Liberty Counsel, referencing the court’s decision on New York churches, said he is confident that it will rule similarly in this case.
“I have always said it is just a matter of time when these discriminatory orders imposed on places of worship are struck down nationwide,” he said. “That time is inching closer each day.”
For religious liberty advocates, the injunction granted in New York represents a turning point for churches seeking relief from gathering restrictions. The Supreme Court over the summer rejected two similar petitions, one from a church in Nevada and the other from a church in California. At the time, Chief Justice John Roberts explained that he was not comfortable issuing injunctions, considering the ever-changing terms of restrictions during the pandemic. The addition of Justice Amy Coney Barrett to the court raised religious liberty advocates’ hopes that her presence would outweigh Roberts’s hesitation.
That prediction proved correct, and the court’s decision proved polarizing. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, who represents the district where the many churches and synagogues are located, decried the decision as the result of an “illegitimate Supreme Court” — a reference to Barrett, whom many Democrats labeled as illegitimate since President Trump nominated her. Cuomo dismissed the ruling as “irrelevant.” Many commentators also weighed in, casting aspersions on the churches: The New York Times’s Paul Krugman, for instance, compared the decision to allowing churches to dump “neurotoxins into public reservoirs.”
But the decision energized religious leaders, especially in California, to speak out more boldly against coronavirus regulations imposed by their own state and local governments. San Francisco California Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, in a Sunday statement, said that Newsom’s restrictions are “precisely the kind of blatant discrimination to which the Supreme Court gave injunctive relief in New York.” Cordileone previously said that restrictions on worship are “mocking God.”
The Supreme Court right now has several appeals for injunctive relief before it now. Churches in New Jersey, California, and Nevada are seeking a similar win to the houses of worship in New York.
