Colorado has loosened coronavirus worship restrictions after a church called the order unconstitutional in an appeal this past weekend to the Supreme Court.
The state’s gathering restrictions, which previously capped churches at 50% occupancy, have now been removed entirely, according to an amended executive order issued late Monday. Masks and social distancing are still required at all indoor events, including worship services.
Just days before the order was changed, High Plains Harvest, an evangelical church protesting Gov. Jared Polis’s restrictions, appealed to the Supreme Court, referencing favorable decisions given to California and New York in similar recent cases. High Plains Harvest argued that Colorado had put it in a similar situation in which churches were not treated as equals with businesses.
“Applicants feel as though they have stepped through the looking glass into a world where the right to shop for gardening supplies is a favored activity, while meeting as a body to worship God corporately has been relegated to the category of unnecessary of even superfluous,” attorneys for the church wrote in its petition for an injunction.
The Supreme Court in the New York case decided before Thanksgiving acknowledged this disparity in treatment and said that Gov. Andrew Cuomo violated the First Amendment by leveling heavier restrictions on churches and synagogues than he did on businesses. That decision, in which Justice Amy Coney Barrett was the decisive vote in her first major case since Senate confirmation to the Supreme Court, paved the way for decision favoring California churches and opened the door for appeals from churches in New Jersey and Nevada.
Barrett’s addition to the court marks a major change in the way it views religious liberty during the pandemic. Over the summer, the court ruled against two churches in California and Nevada seeking injunctions against gathering restrictions. In both cases, Chief John Roberts cast a swing vote against the churches.
At the time, Roberts emphasized that his refusal to grant injunctions did not reflect his views on the merits of the cases, but rather on his belief that the always changing terms of pandemic restrictions made it unwise to issue injunctions in any cases.
