Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/20a136_bq7c.pdf
Page Number: 14.0

Cite as:  592 U. S. ____ (2021) 

5 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

health policy, the Court forgets what a neutrality rule de-
mands.  The Court insists on treating unlike cases, not like 
ones, equivalently.2 
  This is no garden-variety legal error: In forcing California 
to ignore its experts’ scientific findings, the Court impairs 
the  State’s  effort  to  address  a  public  health  emergency.  
There  are  good  reasons  why  the  Constitution  “principally 
entrusts  the  safety  and  the  health  of  the  people”  to  state 
officials,  not  federal  courts.    South  Bay,  590  U. S.,  at  ___ 
(ROBERTS, C. J., concurring) (slip op., at 2) (internal quota-
tion  marks  and  alteration  omitted).    First  among  them  is 
that judges “lack[ ] the background, competence, and exper-
tise  to  assess  public  health.”    Ibid.    To  state  the  obvious, 
judges  do  not  know  what  scientists  and  public  health  ex-
perts do.  I am sure that, in deciding this case, every Justice 
carefully examined the briefs and read the decisions below.  
But I cannot imagine that any of us delved into the scien-
tific research on how COVID spreads, or studied the strat-
egies for containing it.  So it is alarming that the Court sec-
ond-guesses the judgments of expert officials, and displaces 
their conclusions with its own.  See Roman Catholic Diocese 
of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, ante, at 3 (SOTOMAYOR, J., dissent-
ing).    In  the  worst  public  health  crisis  in  a  century,  this 
—————— 

2 For much this reason, the Court’s decision in Roman Catholic Diocese 
of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, ante, p. ___ (per curiam), does not require today’s 
injunction.    There,  the  Court  found  that  New  York  had  “single[d]  out 
houses of worship for especially harsh treatment.”  Ante, at 3.  But here, 
according  to  the epidemiological evidence  in  the  record, California has 
treated  houses  of  worship  identically  to  other  facilities  with  the  same 
risk.  It is the Court, not the State, that “single[s] out” religious activity—
separating it from other equally risky public gatherings.  What is more, 
Roman Catholic Diocese held, at a time when New York was lifting re-
strictions to reflect declining case rates, that the policy at issue was “far 
more severe than has been shown to be required to prevent the spread of 
the virus.”  Ante, at 4.  No court—or, at any rate, no court with any sense 
of modesty—can make that claim here.  California’s hospitals are near 
maximum capacity, and over 3,500 state residents perished from the vi-
rus just last week.