Readers Divided Over Supreme Court Ruling Limiting Pandemic Restrictions on Religious Services

Three letters sit side by side on the Times letters page, each reacting to the Supreme Court's decision to strike down New York's pandemic limits on attendance at religious services. The editors' framing is that readers were mostly critical of the ruling, though the letters printed here do not all point the same way.

The first writer, Jamie Baldwin of Redding, Conn., begins with the line from Justice Neil Gorsuch that has become the ruling's most quoted sentence: that there is no world in which the Constitution tolerates color-coded executive edicts that reopen liquor stores and bike shops but shutter churches, synagogues and mosques. Baldwin answers with a question about the world we actually live in. In a pandemic, people gathering in large numbers for long periods pose a threat to everyone's welfare, Baldwin argues, in a way that masked people briefly visiting small shops do not. Does the Constitution, Baldwin asks, forbid necessary emergency regulation during a crisis like this?

Baldwin then turns to Pope Francis, whose Op-Ed, "A Crisis Reveals What Is in Our Hearts," ran in the Sunday Review on Nov. 29. The pope observed that some people react to government pandemic measures as though they were a political assault on autonomy or personal freedom, when governments impose them for the good of their people. Baldwin closes with a judgment: the founders would agree with the pope.

The second letter comes from the other side of the argument. Jane Bedno of Mundelein, Ill., describes herself as a lifelong liberal and an attorney, and says she is shocked that a minority on the court voted against the majority. To her, it seems obvious that no governor should have the power to limit or suppress a constitutionally protected activity.

Bedno also draws a practical distinction. In her reading, the ruling does not stop places of worship from setting their own distancing rules, nor individuals from controlling their own behavior. What it forbids, she writes, is unconstitutional government limits on freedom of worship. That reading of what the decision leaves in place may shape how the debate continues.

The third letter, whose author is not identified in the text provided, takes the hardest line. It holds that no legal or religious construct could justify permitting large gatherings during a deadly pandemic, and that this is not a First Amendment question at all. The writer compares it to falsely shouting "fire!" in a crowded movie theater, which is not protected as free speech. To people demanding religious freedom in the current high-risk environment, the writer's reply is: "Your religious liberty ends where the danger to my health begins."

Taken together, the letters show the argument as readers framed it in the days after the decision. One side sees emergency rules as a reasonable response to a public health threat. The other sees any government limit on worship as a constitutional line that cannot be crossed, even during a crisis. Bedno's point that congregations remain free to impose their own distancing is the place where the two views come closest to meeting.