New York Leadership Ordered To End’ Church Discrimination’
By Stefan J. Bos, Special Correspondent Worthy News
(Worthy News) – More devoted Christians could legally worship in the U.S. State of New York on Sunday after a federal judge told Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to stop discriminating churches while allowing “black lives matter” protests against police abuse.
The ruling by Senior U.S. District Judge Gary Sharpe came amid a broader debate in the U.S. Critics have complained of a crackdown by authorities on faith gatherings in several states under the guise of the coronavirus pandemic.
Judge Sharpe told New York’s governor, the Big Apple mayor, and Attorney General Letitia James that they must enforce the same capacity restrictions on churches as on other gatherings to contain the spread of the virus.
New York restrictions so far limited indoor religious gatherings to 25 percent when other meetings were limited to 50 percent. Therefore, the plaintiffs’ religious activities “will be burdened and continue to be treated less favorably than comparable secular activities,” the judge stressed in his 38-page ruling from Albany.
The case, launched by two Catholic priests from upstate New York and three Orthodox Jewish congregants from Brooklyn, was expected to have wider ramifications for Christians and religious groups. All plaintiffs argued that the restrictions violated their First Amendment rights to practice their religion.
Christopher Ferrara, an attorney for the plaintiffs, called the unequal restrictions “an irrational targeting of houses of worship.” “The idea that houses of worship are some deadly viral vector unlike anything else is just superstition,” Ferrara added in published remarks. “There’s no science to support that.”
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