Supreme Court is set to rule in a case in which a San Diego-area church challenged Gov. Gavin Newsom's order limiting attendance because of the coronavirus.
“We’re dealing here with a highly contagious and often fatal disease for which there presently is no known cure,” wrote Judge Barry Silverman, an appointee of President Clinton. The dissent came from Judge Daniel P.
Collins, a new appointee of Trump’s, who noted that factories and warehouses were open and operating while churches were closed.Last weekend, the church filed an emergency appeal and urged the justices to act quickly to open services for this Sunday, May 31, the “Christian holy day of Pentecost.”Gov. Gavin Newsom issued new guidelines on Monday that will allow houses of worship to reopen, but with limits. The new rules say “places of worship must limit attendance to 25% of building capacity or a maximum of 100 attendees, whichever is lower.” The church filed a revised appeal on Tuesday and said the high court should free it from those restrictions. Their “sanctuary seats 600 persons, and each service normally brings in between 200 and 300 congregants,” the church said. “Some of the larger houses of worship in California can seat 1,000 congregants or more. But under California’s guidelines, plaintiffs will only be permitted to welcome 100 congregants, with no explanation as to the justification for this arbitrary cap.”“In contrast, there is no percentage limitation for manufacturing and warehousing facilities — simply a social distancing requirement,” the church’s lawyers added. “California has never explained why letting large numbers of people sit together indoors for eight hours at a factory or a school, but not for one hour worshiping, provides a ‘real or substantial’ benefit to curbing the COVID-19 pandemic,” they wrote. Justice Elena Kagan, who oversees appeals from the 9th Circuit, asked for a response from the state in the case of South Bay United Pentecostal vs. Newsom.“Labor in manufacturing facilities, warehouses and offices does not typically involve large numbers of people singing or reading aloud together in the same place, in close proximity to one another, for an extended duration,” the state’s lawyers said.
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