Missouri Attorney General Files Suit Against St. Louis County Executive Sam Page Over COVID Restrictions
A copy of the lawsuit can be found here: https://ago.mo.gov/docs/default-source/press-releases/2021-05-11-schmitt-v-page-petition.pdf?sfvrsn=80cb9561 2. “Three weeks ago, I sent a letter to St. Louis County asking for an explanation and evidence justifying the County’s extreme restrictions on St. Louis County residents. The County’s response was vague and unresponsive. Just several days later, the County rushed to amend their shut-down order in an apparent attempt to appease this Office and avoid litigation. It has not,” said
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For 30 years, the Supreme Court applied a simple rule when someone with a religious objection to a state law sought an exemption from that law. So long as the law applied equally to everyone, regardless of whether someone is religious or not, then everyone had to comply with the law.
As the Court held in
Employment Division v. Smith (1990), religious objectors must follow “neutral law[s] of general applicability.”
Ever since Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the Court last fall, however, the Supreme Court has been rapidly dismantling
Smith. On Friday night, the Court fired a bullet into
Kagan on behalf of the liberal justices argued, “If the State also limits all secular gatherings in homes to three households, it has complied with the First Amendment.”
“And the State does exactly that: It has adopted a blanket restriction on at-home gatherings of all kinds, religious and secular alike,” she continued. “California need not . treat at-home religious gatherings the same as hardware stores and hair salons.”
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Kagan went on to say that “the law does not require that the State equally treat apples and watermelons.”
The order in favor of at-home religious gatherings provides an additional win to religious groups, which have argued that they have been unfairly targeted by coronavirus-related safety restrictions in several states.
The U.S. Supreme Court building, Wikimedia Commons, Daderot.
On Friday night, about nine hours after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to grant an injunction allowing in-home prayer meetings, the Supreme Court stepped in, suspending Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D-Calif.) COVID-19 restriction. While California changed the restrictions shortly after the plaintiffs filed the lawsuit, they would have remained in place until April 15.
“Applicants are likely to succeed on the merits of their free exercise claim; they are irreparably harmed by the loss of free exercise rights ‘for even minimal periods of time’; andthe State has not shown that ‘public health would be imperiled’ by employing less restrictive measures,” the Supreme Court ruled. “Accordingly, applicants are entitled to an injunction pending appeal.”