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The Supreme Court late Friday lifted some restrictions California had put in place on church services in connection with the coronavirus pandemic while leaving others in place.
Print this article The entrance to a Catholic church in Long Beach, Calif., is chained off during the outbreak of the COVID pandemic, April 12, 2020.
(Dan Whitcomb/Reuters)
Late Friday evening, the Supreme Court, in
South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom, issued emergency relief suspending California’s broad ban on indoor religious services. The Court ruled that California was “enjoined from enforcing the . . . prohibition on indoor worship services . . . pending disposition of the petition for a writ of certiorari.” The order is limited: Relief was “denied with respect to the [25%] percentage capacity limitations” and denied with respect to the prohibition on singing and chanting during indoor services,” although the Court left the door open to hear any “new evidence . . . that the State is not applying the percentage capacity limitations or the prohibition on singing and chanting in a generally applicable manner.” This lifts some of
Supreme Court Partly Backs Religious Challenge to California Virus Restrictions
The ruling followed a similar one in a case from New York and provided more evidence of a change in the court’s direction after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
In a brief, unsigned opinion late Friday night, the Supreme Court left in place a 25 percent capacity restriction and a prohibition on singing and chanting in religious services in California.Credit.Adam Beam/Associated Press
Published Feb. 6, 2021Updated April 5, 2021
WASHINGTON A splintered Supreme Court on late Friday night partly lifted restrictions on religious services in California that had been prompted by the coronavirus pandemic.