Court to hear arguments on COVID-19 restrictions for churches

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is set to hear arguments Tuesday regarding COVID-19 restrictions on churches in Nevada.

Calvary Chapel’s Lone Mountain and Dayton locations have challenged Gov. Steve Sisolak’s 50-person limit on places of worship.

According to Calvary attorney David Cortman, “It’s clear that Nevada prefers commerce over religion.”

The attorney argues that all of Sisolak’s directives have been more restrictive on places of worship than on casinos and commercial businesses.

“The Governor is unyielding in his practice of favoring commerce over religion by imposing no hard cap on those venues,” Cortman wrote in a brief filed last week. “So huge casinos, for instance, although now operating at 25 percent capacity, can still provide gaming for hundreds of patrons, if not thousands, at a time. And as for retail businesses, they continue to operate at 50 percent capacity with no other numerical limit.”

The hearing comes just after the U.S. Supreme Court late last month blocked pandemic restrictions on houses of worship in New York, and later ordered judges in California to do the same.

That was a reversal from a July decision, when the high court, without newly appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett, decided to permit capacity limits on churches in California and Nevada.

In a dissent this summer, Justice Samuel Alito wrote: “The Constitution guarantees the free exercise of religion. It says nothing about freedom to play craps or blackjack, to feed tokens into a slot machine or to engage in any other game of chance.”

In June, U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware denied a request from Calvary Chapel to reopen at 50 percent capacity. The church appealed to the 9th Circuit, which is based in San Francisco, arguing that the restrictions on religious gatherings violated parishioners’ First Amendment rights.

Nevada’s houses of worship reopened in the spring after Sisolak limited attendance to 50 people with social distancing, while allowing casinos and other businesses to operate at 50 percent of normal capacity. Public gatherings were temporarily allowed to increase to 250 people, but last month, Sisolak ordered a three-week “statewide pause” that limited capacity to 25 percent at restaurants, bars, gyms and other businesses.

Calvary’s lawyers have asked that Nevada at least extend its capacity limit to reflect the percentage restricted to casinos and other businesses.

“In Nevada, the most favored entities are financial institutions; professional offices; and essential infrastructure, such as manufacturers, all of which are limited by the neutral and generally applicable requirement of social distancing requirements,” Cortman wrote. “There is no compelling reason why religious gatherings should not receive the same treatment.”

Contact David Ferrara at dferrara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039. Follow @randompoker on Twitter.