Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/20a87_4g15.pdf
Page Number: 10.0

Cite as:  592 U. S. ____ (2020) 

3 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

J., dissenting).  In far too many places, for far too long, our 
first freedom has fallen on deaf ears. 

* 
What could justify so radical a departure from the First 
Amendment’s terms and long-settled rules about its appli-
cation?  Our  colleagues  offer  two  possible  answers.    Ini-
tially, some point to a solo concurrence in South Bay Pente-
costal  Church  v.  Newsom,  590  U. S.  ___  (2020),  in  which 
THE CHIEF JUSTICE expressed willingness to defer to exec-
utive  orders  in  the  pandemic’s  early  stages  based  on  the
newness of the emergency and how little was then known 
about  the  disease.  Post,  at  5  (opinion  of  BREYER,  J.).  At 
that  time,  COVID  had  been  with  us,  in  earnest,  for  just 
three months.  Now, as we round out 2020 and face the pro-
spect of entering a second calendar year living in the pan-
demic’s shadow, that rationale has expired according to its 
own  terms.  Even  if  the  Constitution  has  taken  a  holiday 
during this pandemic, it cannot become a sabbatical.  Ra-
ther than apply a nonbinding and expired concurrence from 
South Bay, courts must resume applying the Free Exercise
Clause.  Today, a majority of the Court makes this plain. 

Not only did the South Bay concurrence address different 
circumstances than we now face, that opinion was mistaken 
from the start.  To justify its result, the concurrence reached
back 100 years in the U. S. Reports to grab hold of our de-
cision  in  Jacobson  v.  Massachusetts,  197  U.  S.  11  (1905). 
But  Jacobson  hardly  supports  cutting  the  Constitution 
loose during a pandemic.  That decision involved an entirely
different mode of analysis, an entirely different right, and 
an entirely different kind of restriction. 

Start with the mode of analysis.  Although Jacobson pre-
dated  the  modern  tiers  of  scrutiny,  this  Court  essentially 
applied  rational  basis  review  to  Henning  Jacobson’s  chal-
lenge  to  a  state  law  that,  in  light  of  an  ongoing  smallpox 
pandemic, required individuals to take a vaccine, pay a $5