Trump Supreme Court shows how bad it's going to be with order putting churches above public health

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Hours before Thanksgiving, we got an ugly look at what the fully Trumpified Supreme Court is going to bring us. The court of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett brought us an unsigned order saying that New York’s public health guidelines don’t apply to religious organizations, because FREEDOM. The guidelines in question limit attendance at religious services in coronavirus hot spots. Currently, the harshest limits are in place nowhere in New York.

Before Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, in a case similarly challenging restrictions on church attendance, that local officials “should not be subject to second-guessing by an unelected federal judiciary, which lacks the background, competence and expertise to assess public health and is not accountable to the people.” Wednesday night, that view was overruled by Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas.

“The Constitution does not forbid States from responding to public health crises through regulations that treat religious institutions equally or more favorably than comparable secular institutions, particularly when those regulations save lives,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, adding, “Justices of this court play a deadly game in second guessing the expert judgment of health officials about the environments in which a contagious virus, now infecting a million Americans each week, spreads most easily.”

That’s how it’s going to go: The Trump court puts the right of churches to hold large services above the right of everyone else to live safely. This court is going to be as bad as we thought. At the cost of lives. How apt that Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court career kicked off with a superspreader event and she dove right in with this case.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/11/26/1998413/-Trump-Supreme-Court-shows-how-bad-it-s-going-to-be-with-order-putting-churches-above-public-health?detail=emaildkre

[hlthe2b]

1. There might well be societal backlash if the perception that churches' lack of compliance is

putting the general population--the community-- at deadly risk. I can't say I want to see it, but we very well may.

[elleng]

2. A smart DUer noted:

'The opinion, and every single justice who separately concurred in it, signaled - in no uncertain terms - that religious entities/events are not exempt from generally applicable restrictions enacted to prevent the spead of COVID 19.

What 7 of the 9 justices said was that, if the question was before them, orders that expressly target religious events for harsher restrictions than secular events would almost certainly be found unconstitutional. That's Con Law 101. It is not a hard question - and it is a matter of protecting religious freedom. Even the two justices who didn't agree as to that likely outcome disagreed because they believe the rules favor religious events (which also creates a first amendment issue, should secular entities choose to raise it).

But the BIG thing that everyone seems to miss is in the first paragraph of Justice Kavanaugh's concurrence:

Importantly, the Court’s orders today are not final decisions on the merits. Instead, the Court simply grants temporary injunctive relief until the Court of Appeals in December, and then this Court as appropriate, can more fully consider the merits.'

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=14631402

Thanks, Ms. Toad.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

4. So in the mean time how many will catch COVID-19 while Cuomo is considering a restriction that

pleases Beer Bong Brett, Amy Covid Barrett and the rest?

The Catholic Arch-Diocese of Seattle and the one of Phoenix have put up restrictions due to COVID-19. Pope Francis has also ecouraged restrictions. An [link ope Blasts Those Who Criticize COVID Restrictions in the Name of “Personal Freedom”|editorial by the Pope] appeared in the New York Times the day after the Supreme Court decision.

Oh and I lost a cousin last week to COVID-19 so this shit is very real to me

[MustLoveBeagles]

6. I'm sorry for your loss

[SWBTATTReg]

3. What is going to happen, that everyone that goes to a church gathering will now have to self ID

themselves before they go into other public spaces, and spread their church given CV infections to the rest of the community? That's how I feel now. This is totally selfish, totally irresponsible of church community members to have 'responsibility' to the rest of the community. I'll remember this now in the future, should a church ever want to open up a new facility in my neighborhood. I'll remind the neighborhood that hey, these churches are above the common good of all, are above the law that the rest of us follow, for the common good of all, and that they are hotbeds of infections.

I don't understand the rationale that these idiots in the supreme court used in coming up w/ this ruling. All this is going to do, is spread this deadly disease more widely, as it has already been spread by churches in past (already infected w/ the CV) in various locations throughout the Country. NOTE: There are other discussions by prior DUers that better explain this decision by the Supreme Court, I am just ranting here so forgive me here for venting, I just feel like that churches and their members have a ultimate responsibility to the communities that they belong to, and this ruling seems to advocate that they don't have a responsibility here.

[Midnight Writer]

5. Their right to gather and worship an invisible cloud being trumps my right to live and not get sick.

Got it.