With Barrett On Supreme Court, California’s Church COVID Limits Are Being Overturned Sunday, April 18, 2021 | Sacramento, CA
The Supreme Court said California can no longer continue with a ban on indoor church services put in place amid the pandemic.
J. Scott Applewhite / AP Photo
California’s churches are on a roll.
After more than a year of legal tussling with state public health officials over restrictions on indoor gatherings, houses of worship mostly evangelical or Catholic and politically conservative have been on a winning streak at the nation’s highest court.
Their latest victory came late last week when the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority put a hold on the state’s limits on indoor Bible study and other forms of worship. Most legal battles play out over years, and this was a preliminary decision; the ju
New Study on Supreme Court Shows Dramatic Increase in Support for Religious Freedom
A new study of Supreme Court decisions going back to 1953 shows the nation’s highest tribunal has moved from supporting religious freedom less than half the time to almost always in recent years.
“The Roberts Court has ruled in favor of religious organizations far more frequently than its predecessors, over 81% of the time, compared to about 50% for all previous eras since 1953,” report legal scholars Lee Epstein and Eric Posner Jr. in the latest edition of the University of Chicago’s Supreme Court Review.
“In most of these cases, the winning religion was a mainstream Christian organization, whereas in the past pro-religion outcomes more frequently favored minority or marginal religious organizations,” the study said.
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California lifts mandatory COVID-19 capacity limits for churches
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California lifts mandatory COVID-19 capacity limits for churches
California lifts mandatory COVID-19 capacity limits for churches
Demonstrators holding signs demanding their church to reopen, protest during a rally to re-open California and against extending Stay-At-Home directives on May 1, 2020, in San Diego, California. | Sandy Huffaker/AFP via Getty Images
California will no longer require houses of worship to adhere to capacity limits, changing its COVID-19 gathering policies after multiple Supreme Court rulings have gone against the state.
In an update made Monday to the state’s COVID-19 website, under the category of “Places of worship and cultural ceremonies,” California’s Department of Public Health changed the language on capacity limits from “mandatory” to “strongly recommended.”
The U.S. Supreme Court building, Wikimedia Commons, Daderot.
It’s rare that a Supreme Court decision provides hints of impatience or frustration among the justices with members of lower federal courts, but that was the case late Friday with
Consider the concluding paragraph(s) of the 5-4 decision in which the conservative majority struck down, yet again, the infamous Ninth Circuit’s decisions upholding California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s regulatory monstrosity of COVID-19 lockdown measures against religious assembly:
This is the fifth time the Court has summarily rejected the Ninth Circuit’s analysis of California’s COVID restrictions on religious exercise. See Harvest Rock Church v. Newsom, 592 U. S. (2020); South Bay, 592 U. S. ; Gish v. Newsom, 592 U. S. (2021); Gateway City, 592 U. S. .