Religious Gatherings Are Not Exempt from COVID-19
By: David Sackman
Tags: Covid 19, Supreme Court, Lockdown, Religion, Stay At Home

They Should Not Be Exempt From Government Restrictions Either

In my article, No, You Don’t Have the “Freedom” to Impose Your Religion on Me, I criticized Justice Alito’s comments of “unimaginable restrictions” on so-called “religious freedom.” His comments were especially disturbing in light of the numerous cases which were coming up to the Court. Sure enough, one of these cases was just decided, on precisely the issue he had just spoken of.

In Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, Alito, joined by four other Justices, granted an emergency injunction against the City of New York’s COVID-19 rules as applied to “religious” gatherings. To be fair, New York set itself up for this decision by making restrictions on religious gatherings different than those applied to other types of gatherings. While religious gatherings were limited to a specific number (10 in “red” zones and 25 in “orange” zones), other businesses and gatherings either had no limitations or could decide for themselves the limit of capacity. Because these restrictions did not meet the “the minimum requirement of neutrality” they were subject to the “strict scrutiny” test. But New York could not explain what purpose was served by stricter regulations of religious activity, much less the required showing that they be “narrowly tailored” to serve a “compelling” state interest.

The lesson from this case is that religious gatherings should be treated just like any other, subject to the same restrictions. Neither harsher nor more lenient rules for religious gatherings can be justified.

Yet some jurisdictions are now issuing orders which discriminate the other way, exempting religious and protest activities entirely from any restrictions. In response to a new surge of COVID-19 cases, Los Angeles County prohibited “All public and private gatherings and events with people from more than one household” except “faith-based services and outdoor protests” This was later modified to allow only outdoor religious services and protests, on the same basis as other activities. The December 3, 2020 Order from the Governor of California similarly banned all indoor services.

COVID-19 does not care what you are doing when it gets inside you. Attending religious services will not save you from dying from COVID-19. In fact, the Catholic Church, Orthodox Jewish congregations, and mega-churches who are pressing these legal cases are actually violating their own religious injunctions. The Bible is full of commands from God to quarantine for various illnesses. For example, in Numbers 5, the Israelites are commanded to “remove from camp anyone with an eruption or a discharge or anyone defiled by a corpse.” In Numbers 9, the commandment of the Passover meal is delayed for those who are “unclean” by reason of contact with a corpse, until they can become clean again. Again and again, the Bible instructs us to maintain cleanliness, even before other religious duties.

Religious activities should be treated like any other activity when it comes to pandemic-related restrictions, no more and no less. The holiest religious activity we can engage in is to take care of each other.

Stay Safe!