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The problem arises because the government is not supposed to judge the merit, efficacy, or importance/value of a otherwise lawful religious practice. The gover
by pnw_hazor 6y ago
The problem arises because the government is not supposed to judge the merit, efficacy, or importance/value of a otherwise lawful religious practice.
The government needs a neutral independent reason that withstands strict scrutiny to regulate religion. For example, building fire codes can apply to religious buildings. But many zoning ordinances have to exempt religious buildings.
Here the government is saying some commercial activities, like grocery stores are more important than going to church.
The SCOTUS order is side-stepping the issue by trying to categorize religious practice as similar to going to see a movie.
It would be interesting to see how the court would have ruled on an appeal of a fully developed case. Here, since they are evaluating an emergency stay order, rather than a fully developed case, I think they were comfortable cutting some corners.
- ryandrake 6y agoIf the governments were smart, they would not pick and choose specific activities and industries to allow and disallow, but instead simply prohibited closely packed or indoor gatherings (by whatever measurement of "closely-packed" makes epidemiological sense) and left it at that. That way, if a church wanted to stay in service they could simply figure out how to comply, like by doing it outside and 2 meters between people. But no, governments instead editorialized and said these kinds of businesses are cool and these aren't, turning it into a politically charged value judgment of this industry vs that activity.
- pnw_hazor 6y agoAgreed. They could have made a blanket rule that set a base standard that applied to all business or orgs, including churches, and then stricter targeted rules for particular non-religious organizations if they needed to.