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On Friday night, about nine hours after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to grant an injunction allowing in-home prayer meetings, the Supreme Court stepped in, suspending Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D-Calif.) COVID-19 restriction. While California changed the restrictions shortly after the plaintiffs filed the lawsuit, they would have remained in place until April 15.
“Applicants are likely to succeed on the merits of their free exercise claim; they are irreparably harmed by the loss of free exercise rights ‘for even minimal periods of time’; andthe State has not shown that ‘public health would be imperiled’ by employing less restrictive measures,” the Supreme Court ruled. “Accordingly, applicants are entitled to an injunction pending appeal.”
This marked the fifth time the Court “has summarily rejected the Ninth Circuit’s analysis of California’s COVID restrictions on religious exercise,” the Court noted. “California’s Blueprint System contains myriad exceptions and accommodations for comparable activities, thus requiring the application of strict scrutiny.”
While the Court issued an unsigned “Per Curiam” decision, four justices dissented: Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Stephen Breyer. Roberts said he would not grant the injunction, while Kagan wrote a dissent, with which Sotomayor and Breyer joined. In other words, former President Donald Trump’s conservative Supreme Court majority saved these in-home gatherings from the leftist justices, along with Roberts.
The Court ruled that “the Ninth Circuit’s failure to grant an injunction pending appeal was erroneous.” The justices went on to lay out four key points on religious freedom.
“First, government regulations are not neutral and generally applicable, and therefore trigger strict scrutiny under the Free Exercise Clause, whenever they treat any comparable secular activity more favorably than religious exercise,” the Court argued, citing Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo (2020).
“Second, whether two activities are comparable for purposes of the Free Exercise Clause must be judged against the asserted government interest that justifies the regulation at issue,” the Court added. “Comparability is concerned with the risks various activities pose, not the reasons why people gather.”
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“Third, the government has the burden to establish that the challenged law satisfies strict scrutiny. To do so in this context, it must do more than assert that certain risk factors ‘are always present in worship, or always absent from the other secular activities’ the government may allow,” the Court ruled. “Instead, narrow tailoring requires the government to show that measures less restrictive of the First Amendment activity could not address its interest in reducing the spread of COVID.”
Finally, “even if the government withdraws or modifies a COVID restriction in the course of litigation, that does not necessarily moot the case. And so long as a case is not moot, litigants otherwise entitled to emergency injunctive relief remain entitled to such relief where the applicants ‘remain under a constant threat’ that government officials will use their power to reinstate the challenged restrictions.”
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Will America-First News Outlets Make it to 2023?
Things are looking grim for conservative and populist news sites.
There’s something happening behind the scenes at several popular conservative news outlets. 2021 was bad, but 2022 is proving to be disastrous for news sites that aren’t “playing ball” with the corporate media narrative. It’s being said that advertisers are cracking down, forcing some of the biggest ad networks like Google and Yahoo to pull their inventory from conservative outlets. This has had two major effects. First, it has cooled most conservative outlets from discussing “taboo” topics like Pandemic Panic Theater, voter fraud, or The Great Reset. Second, it has isolated those ad networks that aren’t playing ball.
Certain topics are anathema for most ad networks. Speaking out against vaccines or vaccine mandates is a certain path to being demonetized. Highlighting voter fraud in the 2020 and future elections is another instant advertising death penalty. Throw in truthful stories about climate change hysteria, Critical Race Theory, and the border crisis and it’s easy to understand how difficult it is for America-First news outlets to spread the facts, share conservative opinions, and still pay the bills.
Without naming names, I have been told of several news outlets who have been forced to either consolidate with larger organizations or who have backed down on covering certain topics out of fear of being “canceled” by the ad networks. I get it. This is a business for many of us and it’s not very profitable. Those of us who do this for a living are often barely squeaking by, so loss of additional revenue can often mean being forced to make cuts. That means not being able to cover the topics properly. Its a Catch-22: Tell the truth and lose the money necessary to keep telling the truth, or avoid the truth and make enough money to survive. Those who have chosen survival simply aren’t able to spread the truth properly.
We will never avoid the truth. The Lord will provide if it is His will. Our job is simply to share the facts, spread the Gospel, and educate as many Americans as possible while exposing the forces of evil.
To those who have the means, we ask that you please donate. We have options available now, but there is no telling when those options will cancel us. We have our GivingFuel page. There have been many who have been canceled by PayPal, but for now it’s still an option. Your generosity is what keeps these sites running and allows us to get the truth to the masses. We’ve had great success in growing but we know we can do more with your assistance.
Thank you, and God Bless!
JD Rucker