Cuomo calls Supreme Court ruling on COVID restriction ‘irrelevant’

• The Supreme Court has blocked some COVID-19 restrictions on religious services in New York state.
• The 5-4 decision was in favor of the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and Orthodox Jewish synagogues, which said they were being unfairly singled out by the rules.
• Governor Cuomo said the ruling was “irrelevant … an opportunity for the court to express its philosophy and policy.”
• Visit the Business Insider homepage for more stories.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo called Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling “irrelevant,” Reuters reported.

The Supreme Court has ruled 5-4 against New York State’s COVID-19 restrictions that limited attendance at church services in places with extreme outbreaks of COVID-19, designated by red or orange zones.

Cuomo told reporters on an appeal Thursday that the ruling would not affect New York’s rules because the area in the case was no longer considered a red zone.

“It has no practical impact, because the area they were talking about was already moot,” he said.

The case was brought by the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and two Orthodox Jewish synagogues who said they were being unfairly singled out by the rules, according to Reuters.

The case was based on an October decision by Cuomo to shut down non-essential businesses in areas with severe epidemics. The state divides areas into yellow, orange and red based on the severity of coronavirus infections, and church services in red areas were limited to 25% of capacity, or ten people. The diocese said it stood out from other businesses in the same area.

“I think it was really just an opportunity for the court to express its philosophy and policy,” Cuomo said of the decision, made by the court’s conservative majority. Chief Justice John Roberts joined Liberal justices in dissenting.

Roberts wrote that the rules seemed “unduly restrictive,” but he also noted that he believed there was no need to relieve religious services from the order as the rules were no longer in place.

New judge Amy Coney Barrett has joined the Conservative majority, allowing the court to rule on the issue differently than it did before when Justice Ginsburg was on the bench.