The Supreme Court on Tuesday tossed out a pair of lower-court rulings that had permitted states to enforce COVID-related restrictions at worship services. The two brief orders from the justices instruct the lower courts to take another look at religious groups’ challenges to restrictions in Colorado and New Jersey – and this time, the justices indicated, the lower courts should decide the challenges in light of the Supreme Court’s Nov. 25 ruling that lifted New York’s COVID-related limits on attendance at worship services.
Tuesday’s orders are further evidence of the broader impact of the New York ruling, which the justices have now invoked three times in three weeks to tell lower courts around the country that they should be more solicitous of religious groups seeking to worship without restrictions during the pandemic.
In the Colorado case, the justices threw out an Aug. 10 order by a federal district court that denied a request by High Plains Harvest Church, a small church in northern Colorado, to bar the state from enforcing capacity limits. Justice Elena Kagan dissented from Tuesday’s order, penning a brief opinion – joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor – in which she argued that the case was moot because Colorado has already lifted the limits at issue.
High Plains Harvest Church came to the Supreme Court on Dec. 4, after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit rejected the church’s request to block the limits while the church pursued its appeal. The church contended that public health orders issued by Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) and Jill Ryan, the director of the state’s public health department, unfairly limit in-person attendance at houses of worship to 50 people, regardless of the size of the building, while allowing many secular businesses to operate without any attendance limits. The state’s actions violated the Constitution’s free exercise clause, the church alleged, noting that the exemptions in the public health orders were, “for practical purposes, indistinguishable from the exemptions that led the Court to enjoin” the New York restrictions last month. Moreover, the church continued, the state violated its right to free expression by allowing Black Lives Matter protests while limiting attendance at worship services.
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