Document Type
Report
Publication Date
2021
Abstract
Late on a Friday evening in April 2021, over a year into the COVID-19 crisis, the Supreme Court issued a brief opinion that dramatically transformed constitutional law. In the midst of a once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic, the Court ruled in Tandon v. Newsom that state and local governments seeking to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus may not restrict in-person religious gatherings more rigorously than any other type of activity, such as shopping for groceries or working at a warehouse. The opinion was only one in a barrage of cases filed in federal courts across the country — many brought by conservative legal nonprofits — seeking to deny states and localities the power to apply COVID restrictions to religious practitioners.
Disciplines
Civil Rights and Discrimination | Constitutional Law | Law
Center/Program
Center for Gender & Sexuality Law
Recommended Citation
Elizabeth R. Platt, Katherine M. Franke & Lilia Hadjiivanova,
We the People (of Faith): The Supremacy of Religious Rights in the Shadow of a Pandemic,
(2021).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/3929