National Review Online
Sunday, November 29, 2020
Andrew Cuomo thinks he can limit the capacity of churches
and synagogues to ten people in areas besieged by COVID-19 — while other, more
“essential” activities face no limit at all. The Supreme Court quite rightly
disagrees.
Legally, the Court’s recent decision in Roman Catholic
Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo only pauses the enforcement of these rules
against the litigants who’ve challenged them — including the eponymous diocese
and Agudath Israel of America — while the case proceeds. But a majority of the
Court thinks the restrictions cross the line.
Under longstanding precedent, states typically may enact
religiously neutral, generally applicable laws without running afoul of the
First Amendment, even if those laws sometimes burden religious practices. But
if a law that burdens religion is not generally applicable, it must satisfy
“strict scrutiny”: It must be narrowly tailored to promote a compelling
government interest using the least restrictive means available. Cuomo’s
restrictions in areas classified as “orange” or “red” (in terms of COVID-19
prevalence) are neither generally applicable nor narrowly tailored.
Within these areas, different types of establishments are
treated differently, with houses of worship facing some of the strictest rules.
Religious services are limited to ten people in red areas, for example, while
many nearby businesses, including acupuncture clinics and liquor stores, are
deemed “essential” and may admit as many customers as they want.
This policy was clearly not tailored to minimize damage
to religious observance. It doesn’t even allow higher attendance in bigger
buildings. As the Court noted, some churches in New York can seat more than
1,000 people while others accommodate far fewer, yet none could host more than
25 people in orange areas and ten people in red.
The Court’s ruling is neither surprising nor alarming.
Cuomo’s rules discriminate against religious services and thereby run afoul of
the Constitution. And to fix the problem, Cuomo would not need to exempt houses
of worship from the law everyone else follows, but merely ensure that churches
aren’t relegated to second-class status. One approach may be to classify
churches as essential and to assign all essential activities a capacity limit that
takes establishment size into account. Another would be to simply let the hard
capacity limits go, since houses of worship in orange and red areas are still
required to keep to a low proportion of their total capacity (a third
and a quarter respectively) — and because the areas at issue in the lawsuit
aren’t classified as orange or red anymore anyway.
Going forward, the question is how the Court should treat
less egregious restrictions, as the Court’s opinion is rather vague as to where
the line is. In a concurrence, Justice Brett Kavanaugh writes that whenever a
policy creates a preferred, less regulated category — “essential” businesses,
in this case — states must either include religion in that category or carry
the burden of justifying churches’ exclusion. This strikes us as fair, though
it goes somewhat beyond existing precedent.
Perhaps the thorniest issue here, though, is exactly what
it should take to justify different sets of restrictions in different
circumstances. As two dissenting justices point out, religious services often
involve people congregating in groups for protracted periods and singing; this
creates different risks from, say, running into a store to pick up a bottle of
wine. It is absurd to nearly shutter religious activities, even those following
strict rules to prevent COVID-19 spread, while liquor stores face no capacity
limit at all. But in future cases the Court will have to draw its lines
carefully to avoid micromanaging the states’ COVID responses.
In the current decision, however, all the Court does is
reiterate the law. Americans have a right to worship as they see fit, and the
government may encroach on that right only in limited circumstances, which
don’t include targeting churches for unjustifiably poor treatment the way
Cuomo’s rules do.
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