Who's being disingenuous here? I'm providing the reasons I'd use in my arguments that align with equal protection and constitutionally protected rights. Does it align with the actual ruling itself? Partially. The Equal protection issue and being discriminatory part does.

---

Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Maybe you should go volunteer at your local ICU and spend a few days there.

(Deleted cause you are not worth risking getting kicked for) and your don't wear mask's, open up cause its a small percentage who get sick and end up in the hospital. Well there are a lot of hospitals at capacity, Dr's and nurses ready to surrender and just walk out. Oh we love our Hero's until well there well being gets in our way. Maybe you should contact HomerSimpson from his post's he might be looking for a new daddy and you two would be perfect together.

I have a relative's who spent their thanksgiving in the hospital's doing there job's, which right now is pretty much carrying for covid patients, or calling families to tell them there kin just died. How would you like that to be your thanksgiving.

---

Just Triing
Triathlete since 9:56:39 AM EST Aug 20, 2006.
Be kind English is my 2nd language. My primary language is Dave it's a unique evolution of English.

Thanks came here to find out what the league side of this was.

So this was the law.

As part of the state’s effort to combat COVID-19, the executive order and an initiative that it implements identify clusters of COVID-19 cases and then take action to prevent the virus from spreading. An area immediately around a cluster is known as a “red” zone, where attendance at worship services is limited to 10 people. The area around a “red” zone is known as an “orange” zone; attendance at worship services there is limited to 25 people. “Yellow” zones surround “orange” zones; attendance there is limited to 50% of the building’s maximum capacity.

This should have been the law
As part of the state’s effort to combat COVID-19, the executive order and an initiative that it implements identify clusters of COVID-19 cases and then take action to prevent the virus from spreading. An area immediately around a cluster is known as a “red” zone, where there shall be no more than 10 people in a store/building or gathering places, and no one can stay in the store (expect workers) for more than 15 min. The area around a “red” zone is known as an “orange” zone; the limit will be 25 people. “Yellow” zones surround “orange” zones; there is limited to 50% of the building’s maximum capacity. and the time limit is extended to 2hrs.

See one is applied evenly the other is not.

---

Just Triing
Triathlete since 9:56:39 AM EST Aug 20, 2006.
Be kind English is my 2nd language. My primary language is Dave it's a unique evolution of English.

They never should have called out churches or gyms separate. Just stipulate % of firecode occupancy and time allowed at the site.

I don’t feel the religious folk are acting in good faith, but just apply it to everyone to appease them.

Nobody is the boogeyman conspiracy out to ruin Christianity here. It is just that faith is such a major aspect of life here we decided to include it in with talking about other places instead of pretending it didn’t exist. If we didn’t mention it, it would have been “see, they excluded us in it all”.

I’ve never said not to wear masks. I wear them all the time.

My wife volunteers for hospice, I volunteer at a brain injury rehab, teach teen Jiu jitsu clases, work full time and keep mrs Duffy sexually fulfilled.

I don’t have time to hang out in an ICU being in the way.

I have training partners and friends that work at Cottage Hospital (local hospital here). I hear it all.

I’m spending my thanksgiving feeding my family and feeding a couple of my son’s friends who don’t always get to eat.

And my son isn’t even here. He’s in Moab with some other friends. The dad that brought them is a spine surgeon.

And again, nobody at my house today has covid so you do you and I’ll do me.


We’ve known about this for 8 months. Hospitals should have prepared. This isn’t a surprise anymore.

And if there are docs and nurses ready to walk out they should find new work. Same with all these teachers who refuse to teach.

I go to work too. I handle equipment that is handled by hundred of people daily. According to your thinking I’m putting my life at great risk.

Never once thought about “walking out”.

Like I said earlier, two different worlds.

More and more people are starting leave yours and live in mine.

I see people at the beach walking their dogs, masked up and scared, yet their dogs interact with other dogs and people and they see nothing wrong with that.

But I get dirty looks because I don’t wear a mask walking across the sand to jump in the ocean.

And get shit on by people here for having thanksgiving dinner with my family.

Ima go eat some ribs.

Happy Thanksgiving

---

Civilize the mind, but make savage the body.

- Chinese proverb

No, not sure how you came to that conclusion. My point is what slowguy and Sanuk are both saying.

Maybe you can say in NYC they are essential, can say that in Lake George? You can’t say they are an essential business in a lot of places. They are a nice to have, but unless I missed something you can still walk to your “essential” business if you need to.

It needs to be as others have said a risk based approach to closing. Like the fire code. But making an executive order that says something is essential and then on the same foot say something else isn’t essential isn’t how this should work. You shouldn’t get to pick winners and losers by executive order.

How did Sotomayor’s dissent “sidestep” the legal question? She tackled it head on. I can understand you don’t agree with the analysis, but what is the key point that you contend she failed to address?

I would think that movement is a bad thing- one guy has it, he spreads it to lots of others. When I went to church, families tended to sit together. If you had capacity limits and spacing requirements, I don't see the problem.

Here in Ohio during the first hard shutdown, one big mega church near me continued to hold services. A) very few people went, and B) those that did stayed spaced apart.

Having said all that the days of Catholics all drinking from the same communion cup are probably over forever. My wife was Catholic, and that always grossed me out on the 2 days a year I went along. Especially when the priest would chug the leftovers.

---

I miss YaHey

The part I am struggling with is none of the examples provided by the majority opinion are equal to a church service. Large group, indoors, close to each other, for an extended period. They also claimed there is no evidence that such services contributed to the spread of Covid, which is clearly false. Today in the NYT's the Pope wrote a long Op-ed that appears to be more in line with Coumo than the court. Lastly I find it interesting that many of the same judges and citizens that talk about equal protection and discrimination had no problem with Trump's Muslim ban.

Whether movement is good or bad seems like a complex question. You’re trading off more contacts, but at a shorter duration. There is ample literature saying that duration of exposure is an important factor. But, my point is a bit narrower. Gorsuch has no expertise in this stuff. He is saying that two situations are analogous, despite some obvious differences, with no science behind his opinion. If he were true to his purported judicial philosophy, he would show a lot more deference to the public health experts.

I think Justice Gorsuch’s general point is probably apt. As I said earlier, restrictions ought to be based on measurable consistent actions that apply regardless of the purpose of a business, service, or gathering. They ought not restrict worship services outright, but rather should give places of worship the same set of wickets to meet as any other activity. If your church can support its parishioners with social distancing, shorter duration services, etc, then they should be allowed to do that just like a grocery store can stay open so long as it limits the number of customers, etc.

That said, I’m disappointed in Justice Gorsuch’s immature writing. I don’t have enough background in SCOTUS rulings to know if this is common with other justices over history, but I know that this kind of writing would be considered unprofessional in a work product in my workplace, and I would assume as much about most other workplaces as well. Again, we should expect and demand better from the highest office holders in our nation.

---

Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

As to your point about immature writing, this is a relatively new thing, though perhaps part of a broader trend in SCt writing. For most of its history, the Court’s opinions were rather dry. Your note inspired me to re-read Roe v Wade (it had been many years). Despite the strong feelings the subject raises, the opinions are notably free of nastiness, childishness, etc. I think two things have happened since then.

First, Scalia began putting some nasty stuff in footnotes. Other justices followed suit. He was brilliant, and influential. Then it escalated from footnotes to the text. Now, it seems some justices write separate opinions (rather than just join the main opinions of the majority and dissenters) mostly to stay something strident.

Second, SCt decisions are becoming a much bigger part of popular discourse, perhaps due to the Internet and the ease of accessing the decisions. I think it’s fine for opinions to be written so as to be comprehensible by a wider audience. But, sometimes it feels like the word choice was driven by the desire to create sound bites for the non-legal press.

I’ve got no problem with SCOTUS decisions being written so as to be comprehensible to the public, so long as that aim is secondary to writing good solid legal opinion that is useful to the legal community for use in future cases. If you have to sacrifice simplicity for the correct legal language, so be it. I don’t need medical textbooks to be written for the layman, and the same applies for SCOTUS decisions.

Aside from the issue of simplicity or comprehensibility, I would just hope for professional, mature, and straightforward legal opinion, devoid of snarkiness or attempts to put down those who have a differing opinion. SCOTUS decisions aren’t Reddit or even the LR.

---

Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)