What did happen is that the Governor of NY on Wednesday issued an executive order allowing religious gatherings and Memorial day celebrations of 10 people or fewer and got sued so fast that a new order was issued Friday allowing all gatherings of up to 10 people.
Yeah, the original executive order was bullshit.
While religion should not be subject to discrimination, it also shouldn’t get special treatment in cases like this, in my opinion. And adding the Memorial Day celebrations was even worse.
If a gathering of up to 10 people, with proper social distancing, is safe, then it’s safe, no matter the purpose. And if it’s not safe, then it should be banned for everyone, religious or not.
I’ve had a few informal discussions with other lawyers in the area. The consensus seems to be that the tickets issued for attending church or holding church probably are not enforceable on Free Exercise grounds. So far, at least in this part of the state, the few tickets that were issued were quietly squashed.
The difference between a church and a bowling alley, for this purpose, is that there is no express Constitutional right to bowl.
Squashing them wouldn’t do much since they’re already so small and flat.
But a lot of laymen forget the other part of the First Amendment: the Establishment Clause. Favoring churches over Ethical Humanist lectures or bookstore readings by authors or (maybe even) bowling alleys is expressly forbidden by the same Constitution.
Dated a few guys and had run-ins with parents - when asked why I wasn’t in church of a Sunday morning I casually mentioned that God is everywhere and I don’t need a church to talk with him more than one parent yelled at me, variously called me a heathen, anti-christian, bad influence … I was raised northern Baptist by a mother who had a minor in comparative theology from a major Baptist university. If she figured I had the idea of Christianity down by the time I was 12, I didn’t need to be born again, she did it right the first time.
A state may overcome incorporation of the free exercise clause when there is a compelling government interest to do so. The Supreme Court has explicitly ruled that a state may force innoculation of children over parent’s religious objections in the name of public health. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905); Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158 (1944). It follows that a state may prevent religious assemblies during a pandemic.
~Max