A plea for immediate relief from two churches that are contesting Colorado's worship regulations has been denied by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Colorado Governor Jared Polis instituted limits that Denver Bible Church in Wheat Ridge and Community Baptist Church in Brighton decided to respond to by filing a request in the state, the Christian Post reported.
The churches said that the legislation is in violation of the First Amendment. However, the motion was dismissed Tuesday by Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch without forwarding it to the whole court for review and without providing a reason, says SCOTUSblog.
"The denial follows a series of other recent rulings on the court's shadow docket in which the court has granted emergency relief to religious groups seeking exemptions from state limits on in-person gatherings," explains SCOTUSblog. "Among those rulings was an April decision in Tandon v. Newsom, in which the court ruled 5-4 that group prayer meetings were entitled to an exemption from California's policy limiting gatherings in homes during the pandemic."
Court battles over COVID restrictions continue
In 2020, churches in Colorado took legal action against the state's public health regulations because they said the rules exempted churches from obligations that other organizations, including secular institutions, were not required to meet.
The U.S. District Court judge Daniel Domenico ruled in favor of the churches last fall, issuing a preliminary injunction that forbids authorities from enforcing the public health rules.
"The Constitution does not allow a state to tell a congregation how large it can be when comparable secular gatherings are not so limited, or to tell a congregation that its reason for wishing to remove facial coverings is less important than a restaurants or spas," said Domenico.
"With each exception Colorado makes for secular institutions, the failure to make the same exemption for houses of worship becomes increasingly problematic."
The two-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, however, rejected the injunction, and that judgment was subsequently reversed.
The order states: "Plaintiffs have failed to demonstrate a likelihood of success on the merits of their claim that the Colorado Disaster Emergency Act ... violates the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, either as applied to plaintiffs or on its face. Plaintiffs' motion is therefore denied,"
During the course of the case brought by Denver Bible and Community Baptist against Colorado, the limits on in-person worship in the state have progressively been lifted.
The website, updated on May 2, states that services such as weddings and funerals, as well as worship services, were given the status of "critical," which, as the name implies, means that the service is exempt from certain health and safety regulations as long as it is impossible to perform essential activities in those settings.
"It is still strongly recommended that places of worship in counties with high rates of COVID-19 transmission substitute in-person service with online programming and prioritize outdoor activities over indoor," added the guideline. "As with all essential establishments, places of worship must comply with required guidelines ... unless doing so would make it impossible to carry out essential activities."
As for the present challenge, Polis' legal team claimed in that it "would cause severe hardship to the state," as per The Gazette.
However, for the two churches, the disaster act "remains a future threat" which might lead to people exercising their religion being discriminated against.
Many speculations state that the reason for the denial was that the request for relief was "too broad."
