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Page Number: 22

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CALVARY CHAPEL DAYTON VALLEY v. SISOLAK 

KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting 

  More broadly, the State insists that it is in the midst of 
an emergency and that it should receive deference from the 
courts and not be bogged down in litigation.  If the courts 
simply  enforce  the  constitutional  prohibition  against  reli-
gious discrimination, however, the floodgates will not open.  
I agree that courts should be very deferential to the States’ 
line-drawing in opening businesses and allowing certain ac-
tivities during  the  pandemic.   For  example,  courts should 
be extremely deferential to the States when considering a 
substantive due process claim by a secular business that it 
is being treated worse than another business.  Cf. Jacobson 
v.  Massachusetts,  197  U. S.  11,  25–28  (1905).    Under  the 
Constitution, state and local governments, not the federal 
courts,  have  the  primary  responsibility  for  addressing 
COVID–19 matters such as quarantine requirements, test-
ing  plans,  mask mandates, phased  reopenings,  school  clo-
sures, sports rules, adjustment of voting and election proce-
dures,  state  court  and  correctional  institution  practices, 
and the like.   
  But COVID–19 is not a blank check for a State to discrim-
inate against religious people, religious organizations, and 
religious services.  There are certain constitutional red lines 
that a State may not cross even in a crisis.  Those red lines 
include racial discrimination, religious discrimination, and 
content-based suppression of speech.  This Court’s history 
is littered with unfortunate examples of overly broad judi-
cial deference to the government when the government has 
invoked  emergency  powers  and  asserted  crisis  circum-
stances to override equal-treatment and free-speech princi-
ples.  The court of history has rejected those jurisprudential 
mistakes and cautions us against an unduly deferential ju-
dicial approach, especially when questions of racial discrim-
ination,  religious  discrimination,  or  free  speech  are  at 
stake. 
  Finally, the State relies on the Court’s recent temporary 
injunction decision in South Bay United Pentecostal Church