California Superior Court Judge Gregory Pulskamp on Thursday (10) evening severely rebuked Governor Gavin Newsom’s epidemic ban and ruled to overturn “all COVID-19 restrictions that do not treat places of worship on an equal footing with businesses such as Wal-Mart and movie production companies.
The case, Father Trevor Burfitt v Gavin Newsom, was brought by attorneys from the Thomas More Society on behalf of Father Burfitt and the dioceses of Los Angeles, San Diego and San Bernardino.
These parishes, as well as Protestant, Jewish and other religious groups, are prohibited from holding any indoor gatherings.
The judge noted that Newsom’s recently issued Blueprint for a Safer Economy and Regional Stay at Home Order do not comply with the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of religious belief and practice for Americans, and that the bans do not treat businesses and institutions equally and are not enforced in the least restrictive manner required by the essential public interest.
In his ruling, the judge wrote: “In this context, these restrictions are not only not ‘neutral’ but also not ‘generally applicable’ because they place entities in a different classification and result in less favorable treatment of religious activities than general secular activities.”
“For example, both the ‘purple tier’ of the Blueprint for a Secure Economy and the recently implemented ‘regional homeownership orders’ have banned indoor religious activities across the board, but at the same time (state capitals) have allowed a variety of secular indoor activities to varying degrees .”
The entities permitted to engage in indoor activities are referred to as “essential industries” or “critical infrastructure” and range from big box stores, grocery stores, home improvement stores, hotels, airports, train stations, bus stations, movie studios, warehouses, factories, schools, etc.
The judge said, “It is important to note that virtually all entities permitted to conduct indoor activities do not engage in constitutionally protected activities, while activities in places of worship are expressly protected by the Constitution.”
The judge said the ruling is not the final disposition of the Newsom statute challenge, but state officials must stop enforcement pending a full trial on the merits.
Chris Ferrara, an attorney retained by the plaintiffs and legal counsel for the Thomas More Society, applauded the ruling, saying, “(The defendants) failed to contain the virus after more than nine months of tyranny in the name of ‘containing the spread the spread of the virus, the governor’s dictators who presided over the draconian lockdown have run out of runway, claiming that churches are more dangerous and carriers of the virus than any litany of ‘vital enterprises’ that were allowed to continue operating at 100 percent capacity.”
Ferrara said it was “blatantly biased” for the state to allow hair salons to provide proximity services during the epidemic while banning people from attending church services.
The state of California declared a regional home rule on Dec. 3, 2020, banning gatherings of any size, shutting down operations outside of non-critical infrastructure and retail, and requiring 100 percent enforcement of masking and social distance rules.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys point out that during this time, retailer giants like Walmart and Costco are open for business, yet even the smallest local churches are closed and thousands of small businesses are selling the same products that are on the retailer giants’ shelves.
“A man can enter a bookstore and browse as much as he wants, but he is forbidden to set foot in a church. A person can sit in various ‘necessary’ offices with co-workers all day, five days a week, but that same person is prohibited from sitting in a ‘non-essential’ church for an hour.”
In California, lawyers say, people can march shoulder-to-shoulder with thousands of chanting, singing political protesters, but must be more than six feet away from a worshipping public or forbidden from singing hymns together.
Religious liberty advocates were heartened by the decision. Jeremy Dys, special counsel for litigation and communications at the First Liberty Institute, told the Epoch Times on Friday (11), “Governors and officials have to understand that the First Amendment is not going to be suspended during (any) crisis. If anything happens, these are the times when we must fight harder to preserve the freedoms and principles that bind us together.”
A spokesman for Governor Newsom did not comment on the case ruling.
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