BREAKING: Federal appeals court blocks Governor Cuomo’s restrictions on size of religious gatherings

Left: Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn. CNA file photo / Right: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, pictured in 2016. Credit: a kat/Shutterstock

New York City, N.Y., Dec 28, 2020 / 03:55 pm (CNA).- Handing an important religious freedom victory to houses of worship in New York, the state’s Second Circuit ordered that the 10 and 25-person caps to worship had to be suspended while the case is pending.

According to the Becket Fund, who represented a group of Synagogues and rabbis as well as the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, the court’s decision “effectively means that New York cannot enforce its caps against any house of worship.”

“And since Connecticut is also in the Second Circuit, it means that Connecticut’s similar caps on worship are unconstitutional,” Becket Fund explained in a tweet.

And since Connecticut is also in the Second Circuit, it means that Connecticut’s similar caps on worship are unconstitutional.

On November 25th, the day before Thanksgiving, the Supreme Court ruled that Governor Andrew Cuomo’s 10 and 25-person caps on worship attendance were discriminatory against synagogues and other houses of worship. Since that decision, a majority of states have moved away from caps on worship attendance.

“The Court also said that after remand the district court had to reconsider the 25% and 33% percentage capacity limits using ‘strict scrutiny’ – the highest standard known to constitutional law. That will be a hard standard for the Governor to meet,” The Becket Fund stated.

“It would be better to stop trying to restrict synagogues, churches, and mosques. Gov. Cuomo should read the writing on the wall and let New York join the 33 states that do not cap or put percentage limits on in-person worship,” The Becket Fund added.

According to Eric Rassbach, attorney at the Becket Fund, “under the Second Circuit standard, California would lose immediately. It makes no sense to allow thousands to mob Macy’s etc., as they did before and after Christmas while allowing zero worship. No other state has such differential treatment of worship.”


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1 Comment

  1. But wait, what? Does this court ruling mean that guided social evolution is a hoax?

    The mutation got legs in 1984 when daddy-Governor Mario Cuomo evaded the universal natural law regarding abortion by arguing that he could not impose a religion—-his Church’s affirmation of human morality—-on a secularist society. No “Catholic theocracy,” he explained/imposed (!), channeling the former President Kennedy.

    Now, along comes the business-as-usual, next-generation Governor Andrew Cuomo, a predictably (d)evolved modern-day theocrat of Secular Humanism who, in 2014, announced from on high that those who oppose abortion (just another severance package?) and now the septic and oxymoronic gay-marriage agenda “are not welcome in New York.”

    And as for the resident primitives already in New York, one simply has to close the doors to both reason and, especially, to churches altogether. COVID—”never let a good crisis go to waste.”

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