Introduction
In today’s blog, we will be looking at an interesting bill, NH HB542. This bill focuses on allowing for more religious freedom during a state of emergencies by allowing for places of worship to function at a similar capacity to essential services, during state of emergencies.
Debate on the topic of the status of churches during state of emergencies has started to appear frequently ever since the start of the Covid-19 Pandemic. In fact, there have been at least, two supreme court cases on this very topic. The two cases, Calvary Chapel Dayton Valley v. Sisolak and South Bay United Pentecostal Church V. Newsom both resulted in a 5-4 vote against the church.
In essence, both churches argued that restrictions on occupancy to the churches were unconstitutional since similar places were allowed to reopen with more people. In the case of South Bay, places like movie theaters were still closed but churches were able to reopen still, hence, churches were actually treated better, hence, the case was denied.
Calvary Chapel on the other hand, did have things worse of. They were only able to reopen to a much smaller capacity, while places like Casinos could be at 50% capacity. Regardless, the Justices voted against it, with Chief Justice John Roberts, being the deciding vote in both cases. He stated that he vote against it, because he feels that in times of emergency, the decisions that impact public health should be made by elected officials. Essentially, he feels that elected officials should be the ones to handle matters of health and safety during emergencies, not the courts.
For more information you can read this article by Vox.
In short, churches who have tried to have state rules overturned during the pandemic have had these efforts met with failure, hence, state legislation is needed to allow for churches to reopen to a greater extent, as taking things to the courts hasn’t worked.
For examples of other bills on this topic, please look at this stakeholder page here. You can also view this page on the BillTrack50 app using the code: ISLXXR.
Overview
With that history in mind, we can get into the meat of the bill. NH HB542 is one example of a bill intended to circumvent the supreme court rulings, and allow for churches to reopen to a greater extent.
The bill was introduced in January 2021 and passed 6 months later in late July 2021. The bill has three sponsors, Keith Ammon, Jim Kofalt and Travis O’Hara, all of whom are republicans.
In simple terms, this bill forces the state government to allow religious organizations to continue to operate during a state of emergency at the same or greater extent than other organizations that are vital to public health/welfare.
Basically, this bill makes religious organizations similar to other essential services, such as supermarkets, by allowing them to continue to operate during state of emergencies, such as Covid-19.
If we look back at the failed supreme court cases, we can see that this bill is trying to do exactly what the churches in those cases were arguing; That religious organizations should be able to be just as open as any other essential service.
But, what does a Religious Organization mean exactly? The bill defines religious organizations in a few ways
- A place of worship
- A religious group, corporation, association, educational institution, ministry, order, society, or anything similar, regardless of if it is actually affiliated with any church
- People who work for/are part of the above organizations
These three options are a sort of catch all. They allow for larger religious organizations that have a place of worship to stay open, they protect those who work for said organizations and lastly they also allow for smaller groups that might not be affiliated with another organization to stay open as well. In this way, this bill helps to allow for religious organizations of all sizes to stay open during the pandemic.
What About Government Mandates
One important thing to mention about this bill, is that it does NOT prevent any government mandates from being place on religious organizations if those mandates are also placed on other essential services. There is an exception to this, if the action would place a substantial burden on the organization then it is not allowed to be placed on the religious organization.
A Substantial Burden is “any action that directly or indirectly constrains, inhibits, curtails or denies the exercise of religion by any person or compels any action contrary to a person’s exercise of religion. It includes, but is not limited to, withholding benefits, assessing criminal, civil, or administrative penalties or damage, or exclusion from government programs or access to government facilities”
What this means is that if a government mandate is against ones religion/organization, it can be ignored by the place of worship and they cannot be punished for ignoring it. For example, if a religion had an issue with a government mask mandate, they could simply ignore it without penalty.
Lastly, the bill allows for religious organizations to assert a claim against the government should the above protections be violated and to get damages/compensation/lawyer fees should they win.
Opinion/Conclusion
On one side, allowing for religious organizations to reopen helps support peoples freedom of religion, on the other hand, it also puts more people in danger of exposure and death to Covid-19 and with the new variant on the horizon, getting exposed is as dangerous as ever.
Personally, I feel that allowing religious organizations to ignore mandates/closings meant to prevent the spread of Covid-19 is quite dangerous and could lead to a lot of people dying.
Faith Organizations agrees with this prospective and has stated the following (you can read their entire statement here):
“To save lives, we must continue to listen to medical and public health professionals and acknowledge that social distancing measures – both in secular and religious settings-have proven crucial in containing viral outbreaks. Regulating gatherings, even at houses of worship, may continue to be one of the best ways to protect public health”
In short, freedom of religion is very important, but opening up churches is not worth people dying over. We should continue to listen to medical professions and keep openings of non-essential services to a minimum. Legislation like this is foolhardy and lethal. It will only help to bring about the deaths of more people.
Cover Photo is from Joshua Eckstein on Unsplash