Facts
- By May 2020, COVID-19 had caused thousands of deaths in California and more than 100,000 deaths nationwide; there was no vaccine and no known cure or effective treatment.
- California Governor Gavin Newsom issued COVID-19 restrictions limiting certain in-person gatherings to reduce transmission.
- State guidance limited attendance at worship services to 25% of a building’s capacity or 100 attendees, whichever was lower.
- Comparable or stricter limits applied to certain secular gatherings where people sit together indoors for extended periods, including lectures, concerts, movie theaters, spectator sports, and theatrical performances.
- The State treated some businesses more leniently (e.g., grocery and retail stores, banks, laundromats, and similar establishments) on the theory that customers do not congregate in large groups for extended periods in those settings.
- South Bay United Pentecostal Church sought a temporary injunction from the U.S. Supreme Court to bar enforcement of the worship-service attendance cap after emergency relief was denied in the lower courts.
Issues
- Whether the church was entitled to extraordinary emergency injunctive relief from the Supreme Court to prevent enforcement of California’s attendance cap on in-person worship services.
- Whether, on the limited emergency record, California’s restrictions likely violated the Free Exercise Clause by treating worship services worse than comparable secular activities.
Decision
- The Supreme Court denied the application for injunctive relief pending appeal. (Memorandum order, May 29, 2020.)
- Chief Justice Roberts concurred in the denial, reasoning that the applicants had not met the demanding standard for an injunction from the Supreme Court and that the restrictions appeared consistent with the Free Exercise Clause because similar or more severe limits applied to comparable secular gatherings.
- Justice Kavanaugh wrote separately (joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch) and would have granted relief; the order noted that Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh would grant the application.
Legal Principles
- A Supreme Court-issued injunction pending appeal is extraordinary relief; it requires a significantly stronger showing than a stay and is reserved for the most exigent situations where the applicants’ legal entitlement is indisputably clear.
- In a public-health emergency involving medical and scientific uncertainty, courts generally allow broad latitude to politically accountable state officials to set temporary measures to protect health and safety.
- Free Exercise analysis in this setting depends heavily on comparability: limits on religious services are less likely to violate the Constitution when similar or stricter limits apply to analogous secular activities that present similar risks (large groups indoors in close proximity for extended periods).
- Different treatment between worship services and activities such as shopping may be permissible when the activities are not similarly situated in how long and how closely people gather.
- A denial of emergency injunctive relief does not resolve the merits of the constitutional claims; it leaves the challenged rules in place while litigation continues.
Conclusion
In South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom, the Supreme Court denied emergency injunctive relief against California’s early-pandemic cap on in-person worship attendance, with the Chief Justice concluding the applicants had not met the demanding injunction standard and that the restrictions appeared consistent with the Free Exercise Clause because comparable secular gatherings faced similar or greater limits.