On November 25, 2020, the United States Supreme Court issued a 5-4 decision in favor of religious freedom. The ruling prohibits New York Governor Andrew Cuomo from enforcing restrictions on worship services he ordered in the name of COVID-19 prevention, while the lawsuit filed by the Diocese of Brooklyn challenging the constitutionality of those restrictions makes its way through the courts. The Thomas More Society has been fighting these coronavirus-prompted religious violations across the nation, including an ongoing lawsuit against Cuomo on behalf of Catholic and Orthodox Jewish worshippers in New York.

Supreme Court Slap Down:

The opinion read, “Even in a pandemic, the Constitution cannot be put away and forgotten. The restrictions at issue here, by effectively barring many from attending religious services, strike at the very heart of the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty.”

Thomas More Society Special Counsel Christopher Ferrara applauded the late-night Thanksgiving Eve decision.

“The Supreme Court has made it clear that governors can no longer use a public health emergency as a pretext for dictates shutting or severely restricting the use of houses of worship while secular businesses and activities they deem ‘essential’– and even certain favored ‘non-essential’ secular businesses and activities – are not subjected to the same draconian restrictions. What is considered ‘safe’ for grocery stores, liquor stores and massage parlors, must be considered safe for churches and synagogues.”

Ferrara added, “The Court has also ended reliance on the outdated Jacobson decision, a 115-year-old anachronism, which over the past eight months has morphed into a kind of super-precedent for any sort of restriction on constitutional freedoms governors feel like imposing during a public health crisis. Religious liberty has been rescued from the brink of extinction in the name of COVID-19, a virus with a 99.8% survival rate.”

Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch has specifically addressed the gubernatorial COVID plans that have been one of the chief abuses of religious liberty, writing, “It is time – past time – to make plain that, while the pandemic poses many grave challenges, there is no world in which the Constitution tolerates color-coded executive edicts that reopen liquor stores and bike shops but shutter churches, synagogues, and mosques.”