WASHINGTON (AP) – As coronavirus cases surge again nationwide, the Supreme Court has temporarily barred New York from enforcing certain attendance limits at houses of worship in areas designated as hard hit by the virus.
The court’s action late Wednesday won’t have any immediate impact since the two groups that sued as a result of the restrictions, the Roman Catholic Church and Orthodox Jewish synagogues, are no longer subject to them.
The groups had challenged attendance limits in areas designated red and orange zones, but they are now in the less-restrictive yellow zones.
The court’s new, more conservative majority ruled 5-4 that Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s limits on churches, synagogues and other houses of worship to 10 or 25 worshipers in hard-hit regions appeared to violate the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause.
“Even in a pandemic, the Constitution cannot be put away and forgotten,” the court’s unsigned majority opinion said. “The restrictions at issue here, by effectively barring many from attending religious services, strike at the very heart of the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty.”
The ruling was a reversal from earlier actions taken by the high court in response to state restrictions on organized religion during the coronavirus pandemic. In previous decisions from cases in California and Nevada, Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court’s four liberals in upholding state restrictions.