HLTH 5023 Module 2 Court Case Analysis Example

Ten People in a Cathedral, No Limit at the Hardware Store: A Case Analysis of Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo and What It Changed About Jacobson

Student Name

American College of Education

HLTH5023: Legal and Ethical Issues in Public Health

Module 2 Assignment

Instructor Name

October 12, 2026

Why This Case

The previous module used a tuberculosis case to show that public health authority rests on the state police power and is limited by the Constitution, with Jacobson v. Massachusetts as the landmark. For more than a century, Jacobson was read as giving states broad room in epidemics (Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 1905). During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Supreme Court revisited that room in a series of cases about limits on religious gatherings. The most important is Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, decided on November 25, 2020. It shows how a court now evaluates a public health restriction when it touches a constitutional right that receives heightened protection, and it offers practical lessons for any health officer writing an order.

Facts and Procedural History

In October 2020, New York's governor issued an executive order that divided areas with rising COVID-19 cases into red, orange and yellow zones. In red zones, no more than 10 people could attend a religious service, and in orange zones, attendance was capped at 25, regardless of the size of the building. At the same time, businesses the state classified as essential, a list that included acupuncture facilities, campgrounds, garages and many manufacturing and transportation operations, could admit as many people as they wished in the same zones (Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, 2020).

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and Agudath Israel of America, an Orthodox Jewish organization, sued, arguing that the limits violated the First Amendment's protection of the free exercise of religion. The lower federal courts declined to block the order while the cases proceeded, and the applicants asked the Supreme Court for an injunction pending appeal.

Question and Holding

The question was whether the applicants were entitled to an injunction barring enforcement of the attendance limits while their appeals continued, which turned mainly on whether they were likely to succeed on their free exercise claim. In a five-to-four unsigned opinion, the Court granted the injunctions. It held that the applicants had made a strong showing that the restrictions were not neutral toward religion, because they singled out houses of worship for harsher treatment than comparable secular activities, and that the restrictions were therefore subject to strict scrutiny. Stemming the spread of COVID-19, the Court said, was unquestionably a compelling interest, but the rules were not narrowly tailored to serve it.

Reasoning

The Court's reasoning rested on comparison and fit. The limits were, in its words, far more restrictive than any COVID-related regulations that had previously come before it. The state had not claimed that attendance at the applicants' services had spread the disease, and there were less restrictive options, such as tying attendance to the size of the building; many of the affected churches could seat hundreds. The Court acknowledged its limits: its members were not public health experts, and it should respect the judgment of those with special expertise. But, the Court wrote, even in a pandemic, the Constitution cannot be put away and forgotten.

The practical core of the reasoning is that a health rule treating a protected activity worse than comparable activities that carry similar risk invites the most demanding review. The state's error was not acting against the virus; it was drawing a line that made a 10-person cap in a large cathedral coexist with no cap at all in a busy store.

Concurrences and Dissents

Justice Gorsuch's concurrence addressed Jacobson directly. He wrote that Jacobson hardly supports cutting the Constitution loose during a pandemic, explaining that the 1905 decision involved an entirely different mode of analysis, essentially rational basis review, an entirely different right, an implied right to bodily integrity rather than the express right to free exercise, and an entirely different kind of restriction. Justice Kavanaugh, concurring, agreed that courts owe substantial deference to state and local authorities during the pandemic but wrote that deference in a crisis does not mean wholesale judicial abdication.

Chief Justice Roberts dissented, but not on the merits: he suggested the numerical limits seemed unduly restrictive and might well violate the Free Exercise Clause, yet he would not have issued injunctions because the state had recently reclassified the areas and none of the applicants remained in red or orange zones. Justices Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan dissented more broadly, favoring greater deference to public health officials during a rapidly changing emergency.

What It Changed About Jacobson

The decision did not overrule Jacobson, which still supports the general authority of states to act in epidemics. It did narrow how Jacobson is used. When a restriction burdens a right the Constitution expressly protects, such as religious exercise, courts will apply the standard of review that right ordinarily receives rather than the deferential approach associated with Jacobson. For health officers, the case moved the key question from whether an emergency exists to whether the rule treats protected activities at least as well as comparable ones and whether less restrictive options were considered. A later decision applied the same comparison principle to California's limits on religious gatherings in private homes (Tandon v. Newsom, 2021).

Why the Procedural Posture Matters

One feature of the case is easy to miss and important for public health readers: the Court was not deciding the final merits of the free exercise claim. It was ruling on an application for an injunction pending appeal, which asks whether the applicants are likely to succeed, whether they would suffer irreparable harm without relief, and whether the balance of harms and the public interest favor relief. The per curiam found each element satisfied, noting that the loss of free exercise rights even for a short time is an irreparable injury. The posture explains both the brevity of the opinion and the Chief Justice's dissent, which turned on whether relief was needed after the zones had changed. For a health officer, the lesson is practical. Emergency orders can be challenged and blocked quickly, long before any full trial, so the evidence and reasoning supporting an order should be written down when the order is issued, not assembled later when a court asks for it. Orders drafted on the assumption that a court will read them tomorrow tend to be narrower, clearer and easier to defend.

Lessons for Public Health Practice

Four lessons follow for a health officer drafting an order today. First, compare: before issuing a limit on any protected activity, list comparable secular activities with similar risk and treat them consistently. Second, tailor: link limits to measurable risk factors, such as building capacity, ventilation or crowding, rather than to fixed numbers that ignore the setting. Third, document: record the evidence that the targeted activity contributes to spread and why less restrictive measures would not work. Fourth, revisit: build in review dates, since a restriction justified at one stage of an emergency may not be justified weeks later. These steps align with the least restrictive alternative principle the county health officer faced in the tuberculosis case, and they make an order both more defensible in court and more likely to keep public trust.

References

Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905).

Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, 592 U.S. 14 (2020).

Tandon v. Newsom, 593 U.S. 61 (2021).