House Democrats on Thursday criticized the Supreme Court for a series of decisions exempting churches from state coronavirus gathering restrictions.
“They created a mess here,” said California Rep. Zoe Lofgren. “And the mess is really serious because the virus can kill people.”
Lofgren said that the high court’s February decision allowing California churches to resume indoor services in a limited capacity created confusion throughout the state. She pointed in particular to Santa Clara County, which is still banning indoor services despite the decision, as the results of a court lacking transparency.
“Their procedures really fell short here,” Lofgren said of how the court reached its decision.
Lofgren’s comments came during a House Judiciary Committee on the Supreme Court’s “shadow docket,” the cases on which the court weighs in with short, often unsigned orders. Democrats argued that an increased use of the shadow docket has unfairly obscured its decision-making process from the public.
Georgia Rep. Hank Johnson also took issue with the court’s religious freedom decisions, arguing that along with its other shadow docket cases, the court should have been more clear in what compelled its thinking.
One of the witnesses in the hearings, Washington, D.C., Solicitor General Loren AliKhan, agreed with this line of reasoning and criticized the court for deciding on the religious freedom cases without hearing them on their merits.
“The order provides no consensus on what animated the court’s conclusion,” AliKhan said of the Supreme Court’s decision favoring California churches.
AliKhan cited Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent in the case, in which the justice criticized her colleagues for providing the churches relief from California’s indoor worship restrictions without also commenting on worship restrictions more broadly. Kagan, in her dissent, also warned the court’s decision to side with the churches “risks worsening the pandemic.”
The Supreme Court, since the coronavirus pandemic began last year, has issued orders in a growing number of religious freedom cases. Last summer, the court rejected two emergency applications from a church in Nevada and a church in California. In both cases, Chief Justice John Roberts was the deciding vote against the churches.
But after Justice Amy Coney Barrett ascended to the court following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the court has almost uniformly decided in favor of churches resisting coronavirus gathering limitations. The court gave favorable decisions to churches in New York, New Jersey, and California, among other states.
