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2  SOUTH BAY UNITED PENTECOSTAL CHURCH v. NEWSOM 

ROBERTS, C. J., concurring 

power is used where “the legal rights at issue are indisput-
ably clear” and, even then, “sparingly and only in the most 
critical and exigent circumstances.”  S. Shapiro, K. Geller, 
T.  Bishop,  E.  Hartnett  &  D.  Himmelfarb,  Supreme  Court 
Practice  §17.4,  p. 17-9  (11th  ed.  2019)  (internal  quotation 
marks omitted) (collecting cases).   
  Although  California’s  guidelines  place  restrictions  on 
places of worship, those restrictions appear consistent with 
the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.  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 pe-
riods of time.  And the Order exempts or treats more leni-
ently  only  dissimilar  activities,  such  as  operating  grocery 
stores,  banks,  and  laundromats,  in  which  people  neither 
congregate in large groups nor remain in close proximity for 
extended periods.   
  The  precise  question  of  when  restrictions  on  particular 
social  activities  should  be  lifted  during  the  pandemic  is  a 
dynamic  and  fact-intensive  matter  subject  to  reasonable 
disagreement.  Our Constitution principally entrusts “[t]he 
safety  and  the  health  of  the  people”  to  the  politically  ac-
countable officials of the States “to guard and protect.”  Ja-
cobson  v.  Massachusetts,  197  U. S.  11,  38  (1905).    When 
those  officials  “undertake[  ]  to  act  in  areas  fraught  with 
medical  and  scientific  uncertainties,”  their  latitude  “must 
be especially broad.”  Marshall v. United States, 414 U. S. 
417, 427 (1974).  Where those broad limits are not exceeded, 
they should not be subject to second-guessing by an “une-
lected federal judiciary,” which lacks the background, com-
petence, and expertise to assess public health and is not ac-
countable  to  the  people.    See  Garcia  v.  San  Antonio 
Metropolitan Transit Authority, 469 U. S. 528, 545 (1985).   
  That  is  especially  true  where,  as  here,  a  party  seeks