Valedictorian Elizabeth Turner of Hillsdale High School went by the book in getting her speech approved, only for it to be refused by her school district because expressing her personal
In
Tandon v. Newsom, 141 S.Ct. 1294 (2021) (per curiam), the U.S. Supreme Court enjoined pending appeal California s imposition of a blanket limitation during the COVID-19 pandemic on private gatherings of all kinds, religious and secular, in homes to three households. However, California permitted gatherings at other types of locations such as hair salons, retail stores, private suites at sporting events and concerts and indoor restaurants. According to the per curiam, [c]omparability is concerned with the risks various activities pose, not the reasons why people gather ; therefore, these activities are comparable. Government regulations trigger strict scrutiny under the Free Exercise Clause whenever they treat comparable secular activity more favorably than religious exercise. Narrow tailoring requires the government to show that measures less restrictive of the First Amendment activity could not address its interest in reducing the spread of COVID. Moreover, the state cannot
Nevada has agreed to pay a church $175,000 for legal fees incurred during its legal battle against the state's worship restrictions enacted during the coronavirus pandemic.
Churches in California are celebrating their victory for religious freedom after a religious freedom legal group secured settlements requiring the state to pay 2 1 million in attorneys fees to a Pentecostal church and a Catholic priest and to never again impose discriminatory restrictions on houses of worship
After a federal appeals court rejected a California church s request for a temporary restraining order against the state s ban on worship gatherings, the church is now taking its case to the U S Supreme Court