The US Supreme Court ruled that states CAN, in the name of public health, apply restrictions on church meetings.

The South Bay United Pentacostal Church had sued California over the state's COVID-19 regulation barring in-person worship services. (The rule has since been eased, allowing assemblies within certain conditions.)

Of course, some religious people see it as a violation of freedom of worship. The Court says they're wrong.

From an article on the matter:

<< The general rule when a state is accused of abridging “religious liberty” is that churches and other religious institutions may be subjected to the same laws as everyone else, but they cannot be singled out for inferior treatment. Churches must comply with the fire code, follow most labor laws, obey the criminal law, and so forth. As the Supreme Court explained in Employment Division v. Smith (1990), people of faith must still obey “neutral” state laws of “general applicability.”

<< Thus, as Roberts writes in his opinion, “although California’s guidelines place restrictions on places of worship, those restrictions appear consistent with the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.”

<< That’s because “similar or more severe restrictions apply to comparable secular gatherings, including lectures, concerts, movie showings, spectator sports, and theatrical performances, where large groups of people gather in close proximity for extended periods of time.”

<< It does not violate the Constitution’s religious liberty protections, in other words, to require churches to follow the same rules that apply to similar institutions. And it certainly doesn’t violate those protections to give churches more freedom than similar institutions.

Ignore them.

Is that you, Ammon?

I'm surprised that this case made it to / was accepted by the supremes, ? was it decided then appealed from a lower court?

The supremes heard it through certiorari, which is a frequently invoked process.

California's state government declarative that it was using its emergency powers to forbid religious meetings.

The plaintiff objected and rather than file a court case against the state asking for a stay while the issue was reviewed, instead asked for injunctive Relief, directly to the Supreme Court, asking the Court to declare the emergency order to be overturned.

The court agreed to hear the matter come on no doubt they had their discussions, and private, and then they voted and then a number of the justices wrote opinions.

You can easily find, and read, the .PDF of all the opinions.

I believe that his is a good time for me to keep my mouth shut.
The reason? I hate getting my teeth kciked in!

I'm surprised that it wasn't unanimous. The law doesn't seem that difficult to interpret, but what do I know?

The law is clear, but the supreme court has been politicized to the point where it is on the verge of illegitimacy. The decision a decade ago that the second amendment applies to individuals as opposed to militias overturned two centuries' jurisprudence.

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. "

The court essential stripped the first 13 words from a 27 word constitutional provision.

Meanwhile Citizens United again overturned two centuries of constitutional law by opening the political system to virtually unlimited financial dominance. That decision played a major role in the division of US society because it transformed the Dem Party, which used to speak for poor people of all colors, into an entity that had no choice but to seek money from virtually the same donors as the GOP, leaving no one to represent the views and needs of the impoverished.

There were other decision, but there is almost nothing left of the Supreme Court's credibility. One day historians make look back on John Roberts' court and identify it as the institution that abandoned democracy. So as you note, we are now in a situation in which justices no longer pay much attention to the constitution and the supreme court precedents: party affiliation has supplanted law as the basis for decisions.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court's chief Justice had enough independence and gumption to not vote along party-affiliation lines in this matter.

Agreed. In this one instance Roberts exhibited independence and decided to affirm the established rules. But his overall record is quite different: on the second amendment, electoral finance, and a number of other critical issues, he's tossed out hundreds of years of constitutional law.

Judicial activism is wrong, in my view, no matter how does it. There have been times when the left was guilty of imposing its will regardless of constitutional niceties. But the two protracted aberrational periods--the Lochner era, when the supreme court held that it was unconstitutional to regulate working conditions or prohibit child labor--and the present, it is a conservative majority that feels justified in overturning precedents at will.

I don't think history will be kind to Mr. Roberts.

Yes I still find those two decisions quite staggering. I should try to read up some more history or analysis of the Court, to see if there are any circumstances under which they can be defended as reasonable, according to any recognised school of legal thought...

If you call your church service a protest, can you still have large crowds?

If you prove you're an American citizen, will the police refrain from killing you?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/02/2020 03:17AM by Lot's Wife.

Police make a lot of arrests. They know the forces they’re applying. I’m pretty sure the cop who killed George Floyd didn’t intend that outcome. Floyd had heart problems, seemingly brought on by decades of drug use. He was high on fentanyl at the time of his death. George wouldn’t have had the presence of mind to say “I’m having a heart attack, get off my neck and start CPR”.

The war on drugs killed George Floyd, not the police. That doesn’t excuse them for reckless endangerment or being assholes. It just means they’re not murderers. They do seem fond of pepper spraying the press. Maybe it’s an American thing.

> Police make a lot of arrests. They know the forces
> they’re applying. I’m pretty sure the cop who
> killed George Floyd didn’t intend that outcome.

Doesn't matter. You don't need "intent" to prove murder in MN and many other states. George Floyd was murdered.


---------------
> Floyd had heart problems, seemingly brought on by
> decades of drug use. He was high on fentanyl at
> the time of his death.

Completely irrelevant. "Your honor, yes he did die but he was a drunk anyway so it's his own fault."


---------------
> George wouldn’t have had
> the presence of mind to say “I’m having a
> heart attack, get off my neck and start CPR”.

That's funny, because he had the presence of mind to say "I can't breathe" and begged for help.

Or do you fault him for his silence in the three minutes in which he was without a pulse? What would you have said if you were he at that point?


-----------------
> The war on drugs killed George Floyd, not the
> police.

Why do you insist on saying such ridiculous things? There were two autopsies, one conducted by the coroner and the other by the family's experts. Both agreed that the cause of death was homicide.


----------------
> That doesn’t excuse them for reckless
> endangerment or being assholes. It just means
> they’re not murderers.

What a foolish thing to say. There were two autopsies, two findings of homicide. So far the DA has filed one charge of murder which will likely to be augmented by charges of felony or reckless murder for other cops.


---------------
> They do seem fond of
> pepper spraying the press. Maybe it’s an
> American thing.

Uh, yeah.

There was a similar debate this evening with the Utah Governor's debate on TV. They asked the question, How should government have handled the Covid out break differently, The responses were interesting. Thomas Wright said it's the governments job to inform the people, and the people should make the right decisions on their own, rights should not be infringed. They all sided on the side that civil liberties should have not been temporarily disregarded.

Of course it's easy to say that now, since it's the popular thing in Utah to not be scared anymore. (even though we haven't seen a good drop in new number of outbreaks, we haven't really made any progress).

I remain disappointed that rural thinly populated states like Utah have not been able to restrict the spread of the virus, due in part, to the insistence of the citizens that they should not have their individual rights infringed, for the good of the population as a whole.