Supreme Court sticks up for Silicon Valley churches

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday reined in a California county that continued to bar indoor worship in defiance of a Supreme Court ruling.

In a brief order issued late Friday evening, the court granted an emergency request by a group of Silicon Valley churches to allow them to gather at 20 percent capacity, the same limit retail businesses in the county must follow. The justices blocked Santa Clara County’s indoor worship ban, saying their recent decision in South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom set a clear precedent.

In the Feb. 6 South Bay ruling, the court’s six conservative justices said the state discriminated by banning indoor worship but letting retail stores, hair salons, nail salons, and Hollywood studios open at 25 percent capacity.

Lawyers for the churches argued Santa Clara County “sits as an island of tyranny with a 0 percent capacity for indoor worship services.” County attorneys countered that health officials did not single out houses of worship but banned all indoor gatherings at all kinds of places.

“If the data continues to trend in a positive direction, the county will—as soon as next Wednesday, March 3, 2021—allow all indoor gatherings,” an attorney for the county wrote in a letter to the Supreme Court on Thursday. But the court did not wait around to see what county officials would do.

Liberal Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer, disagreed with the order and pointed to reasons cited in her dissent in the South Bay case. There, Kagan criticized the majority for a decision that displaced “the judgments of experts about how to respond to a raging pandemic.”

Pacific Justice Institute, a religious freedom advocacy organization based in Sacramento, Calif., represented the five Silicon Valley congregations: Gateway City Church, The Home Church, The Spectrum Church, Orchard Community Church, and Trinity Bible Church. “My clients—the churches—are grateful to be able to open their doors again this Sunday after having been locked for most of the last 12 months,” PJI attorney Kevin Snider told The Wall Street Journal.

None of the churches have yet indicated when they will return to indoor worship.