Pasadena Church Wants Remaining State COVID Guidelines Removed

Harvest Rock church is at it again. 

In court papers filed late last week, Harvest Rock Church claims that Gov. Gavin Newsom never allowed churches to meet during the pandemic, despite clear language in the governor’s order allowing local churches to meet outdoors. 

“The Governor has never ‘permitted’ Churches to worship in California and only stopped purporting to impose total prohibitions and discriminatory restrictions on religious worship services after he was dragged to the Supreme Court three times,” the brief states. 

The church is appealing to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena to remove restrictions contained in Newsom’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy’s color-coded tier system.

The U.S. Supreme Court allowed attendance with restrictions of 25% of capacity, and prohibitions against singing and chanting remaining in place.

“Plaintiffs have scratched and clawed for lasting relief for 250 days now, and this Court should reverse the district court’s refusal to enjoin the Governor from enforcing his discriminatory restrictions on religious worship services,” the brief states. 

California’s regional stay-at-home orders have banned indoor activities across a broad range of industries.

In a 6-3 vote last month, the Supreme Court cited the Constitution’s protection of the free exercise of religion and ruled that “regulations like these violate the First Amendment unless the State can show they are the least restrictive means of achieving a compelling government interest.”

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that federal courts owe “significant deference” to politically accountable officials in public health matters, but said that deference has its limits.

“The state’s present determination — that the maximum number of adherents who can safely worship in the most cavernous cathedral is zero — appears to reflect not expertise or discretion, but instead insufficient appreciation or consideration of the interests at stake,” Roberts wrote.

The decision reflected the court’s current ideological divide with six conservative justices in favor of the partial injunction and the three liberals dissenting.

“Justices of this court are not scientists,” Associate Justice Elena Kagan wrote in dissent to the majority ruling. “Nor do we know much about public health policy. Yet today the court displaces the judgments of experts about how to respond to a raging pandemic.”