SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES - May 29, 2020https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/APPLICATION FOR INJUNCTIVE RELIEF May 29, 2020.pdfSOUTH BAY UNITED PENTECOSTAL CHURCH, ET AL. v. GAVIN NEWSOM, GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA, ET AL.
ON APPLICATION FOR INJUNCTIVE RELIEF
Chief Justice Roberts
The application for injunctive relief presented to JUSTICE KAGAN and by her referred to the Court is denied.
The Governor of California’s Executive Order aims to limit the spread of COVID–19, a novel severe acute respiratory illness that has killed thousands of people in California and more than 100,000 nationwide. At this time, there is no known cure, no effective treatment, and no vaccine. Because people may be infected but asymptomatic, they may unwittingly infect others. The Order places temporary numerical restrictions on public gatherings to address this extraordinary health emergency. State guidelines currently limit attendance at places of worship to 25% of building capacity or a maximum of 100 attendees.
Applicants seek to enjoin enforcement of the Order. “Such a request demands a significantly higher justification than a request for a stay because, unlike a stay, an injunction does not simply suspend judicial alteration of the status quo but grants judicial intervention that has been withheld by lower courts.” Respect Maine PAC v. McKee, 562 U. S. 996 (2010) (internal quotation marks omitted). This power is used where “the legal rights at issue are indisputably clear” and, even then, “sparingly and only in the most critical and exigent circumstances.” S. Shapiro, K. Geller, T. Bishop, E. Hartnett & D. Himmelfarb, Supreme Court Practice §17.4, p. 17-9 (11th ed. 2019) (internal quotation marks omitted) (collecting cases).
Although California’s guidelines place restrictions on places of worship, those restrictions appear consistent with the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. Similar or more severe restrictions apply to comparable secular gatherings, including lectures, concerts, movie showings, spectator sports, and theatrical performances, where large groups of people gather in close proximity for extended periods of time. And the Order exempts or treats more leniently only dissimilar activities, such as operating grocery stores, banks, and laundromats, in which people neither congregate in large groups nor remain in close proximity for extended periods.
The precise question of when restrictions on particular social activities should be lifted during the pandemic is a dynamic and fact-intensive matter subject to reasonable disagreement. Our Constitution principally entrusts “[t]he safety and the health of the people” to the politically accountable officials of the States “to guard and protect.” Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U. S. 11, 38 (1905). When those officials “undertake to act in areas fraught with medical and scientific uncertainties,” their latitude “must be especially broad.” Marshall v. United States, 414 U. S. 417, 427 (1974). Where those broad limits are not exceeded, they should not be subject to second-guessing by an “unelected federal judiciary,” which lacks the background, competence, and expertise to assess public health and is not accountable to the people. See Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, 469 U. S. 528, 545 (1985).
That is especially true where, as here, a party seeks emergency relief in an interlocutory posture, while local officials are actively shaping their response to changing facts on the ground. The notion that it is “indisputably clear” that the Government’s limitations are unconstitutional seems quite improbable.
