Denver Newsroom, May 30, 2020 / 10:53 am
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of California's limits on the number of people who may attend a church service, in a decision that saw justices debating whether religious services were being treated more strictly than similar gatherings under restrictions aimed to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Chief Justice John Roberts, a President George W. Bush appointee, joined four Democrat-appointed justices in the 5-4 majority Friday. His opinion emphasized the need to defer to elected officials amid efforts to respond to the Covid-19 epidemic.
"The precise question of when restrictions on particular social activities should be lifted during the pandemic is a dynamic and fact-intensive matter subject to reasonable disagreement," he said, adding that local officials are "actively shaping their response to changing facts on the ground."
Precedent entrusts to elected officials judgments about the safety and health of the people, he said, and they have especially broad latitude in areas of "medical and scientific uncertainties."