Oh boy this one is gonna be controversial. Roberts sided with the liberal justices against churches trying to stay open throughout the coronavirus lockdown:
BREAKING:
In a late 5-4 ruling, SCOTUS Chief Justice Roberts joins the 4 liberal judges in deciding that churches CANNOT defy pandemic restrictions limiting the number of people assembled.— Bill Weir (@BillWeirCNN) May 30, 2020
Clearly, he is a deep state Soros Bill Gates plant bought and paid for by the illuminati shape-shifting lizard-aliens!! Or, he just decided the other way than what many would have liked.
In the dissent, Brett Kavanaugh called California’s attempt to limit church services to 25% occupancy “discrimination against religious worship services.”
— Bill Weir (@BillWeirCNN) May 30, 2020
More from USA Today:
A deeply divided Supreme Court refused Friday night to allow churches in California and Illinois to reopen during the coronavirus pandemic with more worshippers than state plans permit.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who cast the deciding vote in the more consequential California case announced just before midnight, said choosing when to lift restrictions during a pandemic is the business of elected officials, not unelected judges. He was joined in the vote by the court’s four liberal justices.
Roberts, the only one of the five to explain his vote, compared in-person church services to other forms of assembly. His conservative colleagues who dissented compared the services to secular businesses.
“Although California’s guidelines place restrictions on places of worship, those restrictions appear consistent with the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment,” Roberts wrote. “Similar or more severe restrictions apply to comparable secular gatherings, including lectures, concerts, movie showings, spectator sports, and theatrical performances, where large groups of people gather in close proximity for extended periods of time.”
Here’s what Kavanaugh wrote:
“The basic constitutional problem is that comparable secular businesses are not subject to a 25% occupancy cap, including factories, offices, supermarkets, restaurants, retail stores, pharmacies, shopping malls, pet grooming shops, bookstores, florists, hair salons, and cannabis dispensaries,” Kavanaugh wrote.
It’s kind of a moot point since most states are slowly opening up but of course it sets a precedence for the future. There are gonna be a lot of unhappy people over this one.