The New York Governor is NOT gonna just remain quiet on this….
He is also interpreting the temporary ruling from court very narrowly….
Others believe it applies everywhere….
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo accused the U.S. Supreme Court of political partisanship on Thursday after the justices narrowly rejected his coronavirus-based restrictions on religious services. He played down the impact of the ruling, suggesting that it was a reflection of the court’s emboldened new conservative majority.
Regardless of the governor’s interpretation, the decision by the Supreme Court late on Wednesday to suspend the 10- and 25-person capacity limitations on churches and other houses of worship in New York would seem to be a sharp rebuke to Mr. Cuomo, who had previously won a series of legal battles over his emergency powers.
“You have a different court, and I think that was the statement that the court was making,” the governor said, noting worries in some quarters after President Trump nominated three conservative justices on the Supreme Court in the past four years. “We know who he appointed to the court. We know their ideology.”
Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, insisted that the 5-4 decision “doesn’t have any practical effect” because the restrictions on religious services in Brooklyn, as well as similar ones in Queens and the city’s northern suburbs, had since been eased after the positive test rates in those areas had declined.
But less stringent capacity restrictions, also rejected by the Supreme Court’s decision, are still in place in six other counties, including in Staten Island.
After Mr. Cuomo’s remarks, Beth Garvey, his legal counsel, said that the state believed the court’s opinion affected only the now-lapsed restrictions in Brooklyn, and that the other six zones would remain intact…
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The decision represented something of a Thanksgiving gift for Catholics and Orthodox Jews, who had blasted Mr. Cuomo’s rules as a profound, and unfair, restriction on their First Amendment freedom of religion…
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The joy at the high court’s decision was shared in Orthodox Jewish enclaves, which had been a focal point of the restrictions last month, after spikes of coronavirus cases in those communities. Those increases, after months of successful suppression of the virus, prompted the governor’s capacity restrictions to be put in place in early October on houses of worship — of any denomination — in Brooklyn, Queens and two of the city’s northern suburbs, Rockland and Orange Counties….
NY Gov Cuomo response to Supreme’s ruling….
Cuomo downplayed the high court ruling — 5 to 4, issued Wednesday night — in the case Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, New York v. Andrew M. Cuomo, Governor of New York, that sided with religious challengers on First Amendment grounds and barred the state from enforcing certain limits on attendance at churches, synagogues and other houses of worship.
He said the rules being challenged — imposed in parts of Brooklyn with particularly high infectious rates — had already ended.
“It’s irrelevant from any practical impact, because the zone that they were talking about has already been moot — it expired last week. So I think this was really just an opportunity for the court to express its philosophy and politics. It doesn’t have any practical effect,” Cuomo said. “And in terms of religious gatherings, look, I’m a former altar boy. Catholic, Catholic grammar school, Catholic high school, Jesuits at college, so I fully respect religion, and if there’s a time in life when we need it, the time is now, but we want to make sure we keep people safe at the same time. And that’s the balance we’re trying to hit.”…