BENTON – Nothing in a U.S. Supreme Court decision on religious freedom in New York changed District Judge Staci Yandle’s mind about enforcing a lockdown order on H’s Bar in Belleville.
On Dec. 11, she denied the bar’s motion to remain open pending its appeal of her earlier ruling in favor of state and county officials.
H’s counsel Thomas Maag filed the motion a week after the Supreme Court rejected New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s limits on worship.
Five Justices rejected the authority of Jacobson v. Massachusetts, a smallpox vaccination case that Yandle cited when she ruled against H’s.
Justice Gorsuch wrote that many lower courts read Jacobson as an invitation to slacken their enforcement of constitutional liberties.
“Why have some mistaken this Court’s modest decision in Jacobson for a towering authority that overshadows the Constitution during a pandemic?” he asked.
“Nothing in Jacobson purported to address, let alone approve, such serious and long lasting intrusions into settled constitutional rights.”
Maag viewed the decision as a sign that Seventh Circuit judges would recognize H’s Bar as a forum for free speech.
He moved to stay lockdown enforcement on Dec. 1, writing that H’s Bar would likely or certainly cease to exist without it.
Yandle found the Supreme Court case distinguishable from H’s case.
“The executive order at issue there applied specifically to houses of worship and were neither content neutral nor of general applicability,” she wrote.
She found Gov. Pritzker’s current lockdown order content neutral.
“It broadly prohibits indoor dining without regard for the content of the expression that occurs while individuals are eating and drinking,” she wrote.
“It is also narrowly tailored to promote a substantial government interest in mitigating the spread of a highly contagious and deadly virus.”