The Supreme Court late Wednesday night granted requests from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and two Orthodox Jewish synagogues to block enforcement of a New York executive order restricting a…
www.scotusblog.com
At the moment, if I properly understand the explanation, the debate is about whether the limits may be imposed before the lower courts have had opportunity to consider them, so it's not yet a final decision.
Seems to me not unreasonable that, since the US Constitution protects freedom of religious and freedom of assembly, people should be able to turn to the courts to enforce these rights, but I do have difficulty understanding what criteria the US courts use (which wasn't the immediate issue here). I understand the tests we use in the UK and in the rest of Europe -- the restrictions should be reasonable and proportionate, and the least restrictive available method of protecting the rights of other citizens and the government's legitimate interest in protecting public health during the emergency -- but the US criteria seem rather different.
For example, this presumably makes sense to the Supreme Court:
That seems to me irrelevant, since the risk to public health posed by people attending a large act of collective communal worship inside a large single room dedicated to that purpose seem completely different from those posed by attending an acupuncture studio or a campground, but US law is clearly different.
www.theguardian.com
