Supreme Court Halts California's At-Home COVID Restriction Pending Appeal

Steven D. Schwinn, University of Illinois Chicago School of Law

The Supreme Court on Friday granted a motion to enjoin California's at-home COVID restrictions pending appeal at the Ninth Circuit. (The Ninth Circuit previously denied the same motion.) The ruling means that California cannot apply its restriction on at-home religious gatherings to three households to the plaintiffs, at least for now (though likely forever).

The Court compared the state's treatment of private, at-home religious gatherings (restricted to three households) with its treatment of "hair salons, retail stores, personal care services, movie theaters, private suites at sporting events and concerts, and indoor restaurants" (allowing more than three households at a time). The Court said that the different treatment meant that the state had to justify its at-home restrictions under strict scrutiny as to these plaintiffs--and that it couldn't.

Justice Kagan, joined by Justices Breyer and Sotomayor, dissented. Justice Kagan wrote that the Court looked to the wrong comparators:

California limits religious gatherings in homes to three households. If the State also limits all secular gatherings in homes to three households, it has complied with the First Amendment. And the State does exactly that: It has adopted a blanket restriction on at-home gatherings of all kinds, religious and secular alike. California need not, as the per curiam insists, treat at-home religious gatherings the same as hardware stores and hair salons--and thus unlike at-home secular gatherings, the obvious comparator here.

She also argued that the state had good reason to treat at-home gatherings differently than gatherings in stores and salons: the district court found, and the Ninth Circuit acknowledged, that "those activities do pose lesser risks . . . ."

Chief Justice Roberts would've denied the motion, although he did not join Justice Kagan's dissent.