Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 2020

South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom

140 S. Ct. 1613 | 207 L. Ed. 2d 154

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Takeaway

In short, this case shows the Court’s early-pandemic deference to state health measures in emergency litigation, while exposing a sharp disagreement over which secular activities are the proper comparators for Free Exercise purposes.

Background

During the COVID-19 pandemic, California limited attendance at places of worship to 25% of a building’s capacity or 100 people, whichever was lower. South Bay United Pentecostal Church sought emergency injunctive relief against enforcement of that limit. The Church was willing to comply with the social-distancing and hygiene rules applicable to secular businesses, but objected to the separate occupancy cap imposed on worship services.

The application came to the Supreme Court after the lower courts had declined to grant the requested relief. Presented to Justice Kagan and referred to the full Court, the application sought an injunction—an extraordinary form of emergency relief that would alter the status quo rather than merely preserve it. The Court denied the application. Chief Justice Roberts wrote separately to explain his view, and Justice Kavanaugh dissented, joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether the Church satisfied the demanding standard for emergency injunctive relief from the Supreme Court.

Holding

No. The Court denied the requested injunction because the Church had not shown an indisputably clear legal right to relief in these emergency, interlocutory circumstances.

Reasoning

An injunction from the Supreme Court demands more than a stay because it affirmatively grants relief that the lower courts withheld. Such relief is reserved for cases in which the applicant’s legal entitlement is indisputably clear and the circumstances are critical and exigent.

The Church sought relief while California officials were actively responding to changing conditions in a public-health emergency. The Court concluded that it was highly improbable that the unconstitutionality of California’s limits was so clear as to justify this exceptional intervention.

Issue #2

Whether California’s attendance limits for worship services appeared to violate the Free Exercise Clause.

Holding

No, at least not clearly enough at this preliminary stage. The restrictions appeared consistent with the Free Exercise Clause because comparable secular gatherings faced similar or greater limits.

Reasoning

California restricted worship services, but it also imposed similar or more severe restrictions on secular events that, like worship services, bring large groups together in close proximity for extended periods. The relevant comparators included lectures, concerts, movie showings, spectator sports, and theatrical performances.

The State treated grocery stores, banks, and laundromats more leniently, but Chief Justice Roberts regarded those activities as materially different. In those settings, people generally do not gather in large groups or remain near one another for extended periods, so their different treatment did not make the worship restriction appear unconstitutional.

Decisions about when and how to relax particular pandemic restrictions involve evolving facts, medical uncertainty, and reasonable policy disagreement. States’ politically accountable officials have broad latitude when acting to protect public health, and federal courts should not second-guess those judgments unless constitutional limits are clearly exceeded.

Concurrences

Chief Justice Roberts

Reasoning

Chief Justice Roberts supplied the only explanation accompanying the Court’s denial, but his reasoning rested first on the procedural posture. Because the Church requested an injunction after the lower courts had refused relief, it bore an especially heavy burden to establish an indisputably clear entitlement to intervention by the Supreme Court.

On the merits, he evaluated worship services against secular activities that presented comparable transmission risks. Because California also restricted events involving prolonged, close contact among large groups, he concluded that the guidelines appeared to treat religion consistently with the Free Exercise Clause rather than single it out for disfavored treatment.

He further stressed institutional restraint. Pandemic policy required officials to make fact-intensive judgments amid medical and scientific uncertainty, and those judgments ordinarily belonged to state officials rather than an unelected federal judiciary, particularly on an emergency application.

Dissents

Justice Kavanaugh

Reasoning

Justice Kavanaugh concluded that California’s 25% occupancy cap facially discriminated against religious worship. In his view, numerous secular businesses—including factories, offices, supermarkets, restaurants, retail stores, pharmacies, malls, salons, and cannabis dispensaries—could operate without the same 25% cap, even though people could spend time near one another there.

That differential treatment triggered strict scrutiny under the Free Exercise Clause. California unquestionably had a compelling interest in combating COVID-19, but it still had to offer a compelling reason for treating worship services more harshly than the secular businesses the dissent regarded as comparable. The State had not done so.

The Church’s willingness to follow the distancing and hygiene rules imposed on secular businesses underscored the dissent’s point. California could require those health precautions at worship services, or it could apply reasonable occupancy caps across the board, but it could not impose looser rules on comparable secular activities while maintaining a stricter cap on religious worship without adequate justification.

Because the occupancy cap prevented the Church from holding Pentecost Sunday services on terms available to comparable secular businesses, Justice Kavanaugh found irreparable harm and would have granted a temporary injunction. Justices Thomas and Gorsuch joined his dissent.