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  • April 19, 2021

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You are here: Home / Opinion / SC rules: Religious freedom beats arbitrary pandemic restrictions
Opinion

SC rules: Religious freedom beats arbitrary pandemic restrictions

Lilia Rabe-Grava4 months ago

Photo Credit: Dionesio Grava

Undoubtedly, the coronavirus is a devastating plague that has been causing untold sufferings and the loss of lives and livelihood for nearly a year now. In U.S. politics, it could be that the Democrats and their globalist allies, the mainstream media and big tech had been successful in weaponizing this virus that ultimately could cost Donald Trump the presidency, in addition to the reported massive irregularities in the mail-in voting. Suffice to say that at the time when medical minds had initially faltered, stumped by the new kind of disease, the administration had acted swiftly to ban incoming flights from China, the suspected source of the disease, and subsequently flights from other heavily infected countries as well. Those decisive acts, although contested by the pro-China WHO leadership and strongly criticized by then-Democratic standard-bearer Joe Biden as “hysterical xenophobia, and fearmongering,” may have saved countless American lives. 

Despite the never-ending obstructionism of the opposition, a flurry of initiatives ensued jointly with the private sector generating a flood of much-needed PPEs (personal protective equipment), ventilators, and other medical equipment in the fight against the pandemic. The administration also had the foresight to fast-track the production of life-saving vaccines that, in addition to the new therapeutics and other medications, would hopefully put an end to the people’s apprehensions and misery. Operation Warp Speed is a more than $10bn investment program that has enabled vaccine developers like Pfizer, BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca, and Oxford University to develop vaccines in record time. Some of the products are now waiting for approval and destined to benefit all those in need everywhere. Additionally, the program guarantees other vaccine developers income thus encouraging them to take the risk as well as help manufacturers secure supplies and speed up responses to usually laborious regulatory queries. That is not to say that we’re out of the woods already. This COVID-19 has a way of staging another upsurge considering that in a truly free country it is difficult to lock down people completely.

Speaking of lockdowns, two New York-based religious organizations – the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and the Agudath Israel of America Jewish community – had petitioned the venerable justices of the Supreme Court regarding what may be considered as draconian and arbitrary restrictions against the exercise of religion. According to reports, the conservative members of the court had considered Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s impositions against the church “unduly restrictive.” Cuomo, already infamous for making NY the state with the highest number of COVID-19 fatalities with his capricious order requiring seniors who tested positive for the disease back into nursing homes, decreed that the number of people who can attend a religious service in the red zones (greatest outbreak concern) be no more than 10 and in orange zones, no more than 25, even in some churches that seat over 1,000. By contrast, businesses that the governor deemed “essential” and, in orange zones, even businesses deemed “nonessential” had no limitations on the size of crowds that can be accommodated. The report noted that the churches concerned had strong anti-COVID protocols. The court ruled that the exercise of religion being fundamental freedom, any restriction that the state may impose should be narrowly tailored to serve compelling government interest.

FIRST AMENDMENT The U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to worship. On Thanksgiving Day, the Supreme Court ruled that “Even in a pandemic, the Constitution cannot be put away and forgotten.”

Opinion COVID-19

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