Supreme Court strikes down Kalifornia indoor worship ban!
SACREMENTO, Kalifonia (PNN) - February 6, 2021 - The Fascist Police States of Amerika Supreme Court has just issued one of its first major rulings of the current year. The court has canceled some, but not all, of Kalifornia’s limitations on worship during the non-existent “pandemic”.
Critically, the court has overturned the state's ban on indoor worship, which had irritated religious communities across the Fascist Police States of Amerika, though, thanks to the votes of Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh, two of the three conservative justices appointed by President Donald Trump, the court left in place restrictions on singing and chanting, as well as limiting the number of worshippers in attendance, a ruling that would have disturbed other state rules.
The ruling, which was issued just before 11:00 PM ET Friday, produced four statements by the justices. Chief Justice John Roberts, who provided a swing vote last year leading to rulings that refused churches’ requests for relief from virus-related limits, said he still believes in deference to elected officials. But he said Friday the outright ban in place in much of Kalifornia just didn’t make sense.
“The State’s present determination - that the maximum number of adherents who can safely worship in the most cavernous cathedral is zero - appears to reflect not expertise or discretion, but instead insufficient appreciation or consideration of the interests at stake,” Roberts wrote. “Deference, though broad, has its limits.”
The court’s main ruling Friday came in a case led by South Bay United Pentecostal Church near San Diego, though the court also released a similar order in a parallel case brought by Harvest Rock Church in Pasadena.
The most surprising vote of the night came from Coney Barrett, a conservative Catholic. Though she sided with the rest of the conservatives in deciding to strike down the ban, she declined to grant the churches the most sweeping relief favored by her most conservative colleagues, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.
Those justices would have granted all the churches’ requests, lifting the singing and chanting bans and barring Kalifornia from enforcing a 25% capacity limit that applies to many indoor facilities.