SCOTUS grants religious freedom to infect

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Religious freedom to infect

The Supreme Court late Wednesday night barred restrictions on religious services in New York that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo had imposed to combat the coronavirus.

The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the court’s three liberal members in dissent. The order was the first in which the court’s newest member, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, played a decisive role.

The court’s ruling was at odds with earlier ones concerning churches in California and Nevada. In those cases, decided in May and July, the court allowed the states’ governors to restrict attendance at religious services.

The Supreme Court’s membership has changed since then, with Justice Barrett succeeding Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in September. The vote in the earlier cases was also 5 to 4, but in the opposite direction, with Chief Justice Roberts joining Justice Ginsburg and the other three members of what was then the court’s four-member liberal wing.

In an unsigned opinion, the majority said Mr. Cuomo’s restrictions violated the First Amendment’s protection of the free exercise of religion.

Praise the Lord and pass the infection.

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The reasoning in the ruling is that hundreds of people standing side by side singing for an hour is just like three people in a grocery store moving about separately for ten minutes.

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Reader letter in WaPo from Schaeferhund:

Please, stop calling them "conservatives." They are religionists. They are cultists. They are theocrats. They are not conservative. They betray the Constitution. And the culture war is now a religious war...

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Reader letter in WaPo from Schaeferhund:

Please, stop calling them "conservatives." They are religionists. They are cultists. They are theocrats. They are not conservative. They betray the Constitution. And the culture war is now a religious war...

Got a link for that?

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Link to the angry Alsatian quoted