Religious “Freedom” v. Human Rights
By: Aambar Agarwal
Last Wednesday, November 25, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Christian and Jewish religious groups contested COVID-19 restrictions in New York. With this decision, places of worship can allow more than 10 or 25 people in, regardless of COVID-19 cases in the area and contrary to what the Court decided in May for California. Despite rising cases and continued deaths in New York and the rest of the US, the conservative majority argued that Governor Cuomo’s restrictions attacked the religious freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment. They argued that communal worship is more important than countless American lives.
It was a 5-4 decision, like the one in May. However, this time, the balance between conservatives and liberals was tipped; Amy Coney Barrett was in late Justice Ginsberg’s place, thus allowing for the current decision to occur. “It's a different court, and they wanted to make a statement that it's a different court,” said Cuomo; and their statement will likely serve as a precedent for cases in the coming months. If the majority can ignore basic facts – that the spread of COVID-19 is greatly facilitated by groups of people gathering, speaking, or singing indoors – that COVID-19 has killed nearly 300,000 Americans – that tens of thousands of Americans have been permanently damaged by COVID-19 – there’s little hope for future decisions.
LGBT and abortion rights are endangered the most by this new court. After all, since the conservative majority can justify sacrificing American lives for religious gatherings, what is stopping them from sacrificing a woman’s right to choose her future or a member of the LGBT community’s right to live their life for religious beliefs? In recent years, these rights have continuously been challenged on the basis of religion, whether through restrictive state abortion laws or bakers refusing to sell gay couples cake (Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission); with this new court, Americans can only hope for a miracle.
And the likelihood of this miracle depends on the Court’s impending decision in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia: religious “freedom” versus LGBT rights.
More readings:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/26/politics/supreme-court-religious-restrictions-ruling-covid/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/26/us/supreme-court-coronavirus-religion-new-york.html