ALBANY, N.Y. — As the coronavirus pandemic has deepened and darkened in recent months, the nation’s governors have taken increasingly aggressive steps to curb the current surge of infections, with renewed and expanded restrictions reaching into people’s homes, businesses, schools and places of worship.
Many of these rules, often enacted by Democratic officials and enforced through curfews, closures and capacity limits, have been resisted by some members of the public, but largely upheld by the courts.
Late Wednesday night, though, the U.S. Supreme Court forcefully entered the arena, signaling that it was willing to impose new constraints on executive and emergency orders during the pandemic, at least where constitutional rights are affected.
In a 5-4 decision, the court struck down an order by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo that had restricted the size of religious gatherings in certain areas of New York where infection rates were climbing. The governor had imposed 10- and 25-person capacity limits on churches and other houses of worship in those areas.
The decision seemed to signal that some governmental efforts to stem the pandemic had overreached, impinging on protected freedoms in the name of public health. If unconstrained religious observance and public safety were sometimes at odds, as the governor and other public officials maintained, the court ruled that religious freedom should win out.
Mr. Cuomo accused the court of partisanship, suggesting the ruling reflected the influence of the three conservative justices who have been nominated by President Trump in the past four years.
“You have a different court, and I think that was the statement that the court was making,” Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, said on Thursday. “We know who he appointed to the court. We know their ideology.”
The decision represented something of a Thanksgiving gift for Catholic and Orthodox Jewish leaders, who had blasted Mr. Cuomo’s rules as a profound and unfair restriction on the freedom of religion.
“I have said from the beginning the restrictions imposed by Governor Cuomo were an overreach that did not take into account the size of our churches or the safety protocols that have kept parishioners safe,” Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn said on Thursday morning, noting that Catholics had adhered to coronavirus safety protocols at Mass since the virus first emerged in New York in March.
Mr. Cuomo insisted that the decision “doesn’t have any practical effect” because the restrictions on religious services in Brooklyn, as well as similar ones in Queens and the city’s northern suburbs, were eased after positive test rates in those areas declined.
The case’s immediate impact was narrow, setting aside two specific restrictions on attendance at houses of worship — regardless of denomination — that Mr. Cuomo enacted in early October. Those rules were put in place after a surge of cases in several Orthodox Jewish communities in Brooklyn, Queens and two suburban counties.
Mr. Cuomo maintains that those outbreaks have since been brought under control, in large part by the measures that the court struck down. Mr. Cuomo has issued dozens of executive orders since the state’s first reported case in March, and those remain untouched, including other restrictions on religious gatherings.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. noted in a dissenting opinion that none of the governor’s most strict restrictions were currently in force. While the governor’s capacity limits on houses of worship might have violated the First Amendment, Justice Roberts wrote that it was not necessary for the court “to rule on that serious and difficult question at this time.”
“The Governor might reinstate the restrictions. But he also might not,” Justice Roberts wrote, saying it is “a significant matter to override determinations made by public health officials.”
Critics of the court’s decision contended that Mr. Cuomo’s actions had not infringed on religious freedom and that the Supreme Court’s ruling could have dangerous public health consequences.
“The freedom to worship is one of our most cherished fundamental rights, but it does not include a license to harm others or endanger public health,” said Daniel Mach, the director for the American Civil Liberties Union’s freedom of religion and belief program.
Less stringent 25-person capacity restrictions, also rejected by the Supreme Court’s decision, are still in place in six other counties, including Richmond County on Staten Island.
Legal experts say the court’s ruling could be used to challenge those and other rules elsewhere. “The decision is applicable to people in similar situations,” said Norman Siegel, a constitutional lawyer and former leader of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “It’s applicable to any synagogue, any church, to any mosque, to any religious setting.”
Still, Beth Garvey, Mr. Cuomo’s counsel, said that the state believed the court’s opinion affected only the now-lapsed restrictions in Brooklyn, and that the rules in the other six zones would remain intact.
She said that officials would “be looking around the state at the other zones” while also suggesting the state would continue to argue its case in the lower courts.
The Supreme Court’s decision was welcomed by Orthodox Jewish leaders, whose communities had been a focal point of the restrictions last month.
Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, executive vice president of Agudath Israel of America, an ultra-Orthodox umbrella group which had also sued to overturn the rules, called the decision historic, saying it “will ensure that religious practices and religious institutions will be protected from government edicts.”
The governor’s restrictions had led to angry protests in some Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods and even became an issue in the presidential race, when Mr. Trump suggested on Twitter that the unrest and the police response was emblematic of the “radical left.” On Thursday, the president tweeted a report about the Supreme Court’s decision, with a two-word, all-caps message: “HAPPY THANKSGIVING!”
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn requested an injunction from the Supreme Court on Nov. 9, after losing challenges at lower federal levels, saying that Mr. Cuomo’s order ran “roughshod over” the rights of Catholic parishioners.
In particular, the diocese had asked the courts for relief from so-called “red zones,” where houses of worship were limited to 10 people or 25 percent of the building’s capacity, whichever number was less. They also successfully sought an injunction on “orange zones,” where a 25-person cap — or a 33 percent of capacity limit — was implemented by Mr. Cuomo.
Last week, Bishop DiMarzio said that the rules effectively closed churches in red and orange zones — some of which can accommodate hundreds of parishioners — a concern that was also expressed by Jewish leaders regarding their synagogues.
Mr. Cuomo, a Catholic, asked for understanding from the church and Jewish organizations, saying that the restrictions were necessary to stem the second wave of the virus.
In recent weeks, the governor has also announced a ban on gatherings of more than 10 people in private residences and has imposed a statewide curfew of 10 p.m. for bars, restaurants and gyms.
Still, the second wave has arrived in New York, where nearly 34,000 people have already died. On Thursday, the state had more than 3,000 people in the hospital with Covid-19 and tallied 67 deaths, the highest daily toll since mid-June.
The legal dispute between the state and religious leaders has been animated by tensions dating to March over what secular officials consider to be an important service at a time of crisis.
“We are essential to the spiritual health of people,” Bishop DiMarzio said last week. “Bodily health is important, but we are essential also, and we’re being considered not essential. And that’s why these restrictions were put on us.”
Adam Liptak and Rick Rojas contributed reporting.
"to" - Google News
November 27, 2020 at 12:24AM
https://ift.tt/33gTwUL
Cuomo Attacks Supreme Court, but Virus Ruling Is Warning to Governors - The New York Times
"to" - Google News
https://ift.tt/368wPko
https://ift.tt/2YvVgrG
No comments:
Post a Comment