The Supreme Court last week made a major move toward constitutional normalcy: It blocked enforcement of Gov. Andrew Cuomo's hyper-restrictive rules for in-person religious services in New York until the government provides logical justification for treating worship more harshly than seemingly comparable (or riskier) activities.
Unfortunately, the substance of the decision has been drowned out by a single-minded focus on judicial politics - the first evidence that President Trump's appointments to the court are making a difference. Maybe that is so. In the first two pandemic-related worship-closure cases to get to the court this year, it declined to intervene by 5-to-4 votes, with Chief Justice John Roberts joining the Democrat-appointed justices in deferring to state regulators. Last week's decision went in favor of the Catholic and Orthodox Jewish plaintiffs, with the chief justice in dissent.
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