Read It: Response by de Blasio and Cuomo to Lawsuit On Discrimination Between Protests and Houses of Worship

Response by NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio:

Plaintiffs claim that religious services are comparable to protests as
people are standing in close
proximity and singing. However, there is one key difference between
the two, which is that the vast majority of religious services are
held indoors while the protests occur outdoors. It is safe to say that
unlike Plaintiffs Rev. Steven Soos’ and Rev. Nicholas Stamos’ church
in the North District, most houses of worship in New York City lack
outdoor space, or outdoor space large enough for large groups of
worshipers, let alone socially distant worshipers. Moreover, notably
Dr. Delgado’s safety recommendations do not include that the
congregants or clergy wear face coverings.

Moreover, while public safety considerations surrounding recent protests in the
City have led to a temporary relaxation in enforcement of the
gathering limitation, the limitation nevertheless remains in effect.
City officials are addressing the ongoing public health crisis as it
overlaps with the public safety concerns raised by the protests to the
best of their ability, under dynamic and often fraught circumstances.
The limitation should not be disturbed simply because public safety
considerations factored into decision-making surrounding enforcement.
As the District Court of Nevada explained in a recent decision
addressing similar claims:Outdoor protests involve dynamic large
interactions where state officials must also consider the public
safety implications of enforcement of social distancing. That is to
say that such enforcement could result in greater harm than that
sought to be avoided by the Directive. The choice between
which regulations or laws shall be enforced in social settings is a
choice allocated generally to the executive, not the judiciary, absent
clear patterns of unconstitutional selective enforcement. Calvary v.
Sisolak, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 103234 at *12 (D. Nev. June 10, 2020)

Further, it has been noted that health experts and other officials are
concerned that
the protests in cities all over the U.S. may well lead to another
spike in COVID-19 cases.5
Therefore, the fact that the City has temporarily relaxed its
enforcement of the gathering
limitation in the context of the protests out of a need to balance
public safety concerns with public health concerns, does not undermine
the neutrality or general applicability of the gathering limitation as
a limitation on all gatherings of more than 10 people. Therefore,
Plaintiffs are not likely to succeed on their free exercise of
religion claim.

Response by NYS Governor Andrew Cuomo:

Plaintiffs Schonbrun, Perr and Mayerfeld have failed to allege, must
less prove or
support, any irreparable harm at all. They are all permitted to
participate in a minyan. Nothing about the EOs currently in effect may
prevent it.

While plaintiffs Schonbrun, Perr and Mayerfeld allege that their wives
and children cannot attend services, they lack standing to assert any
challenges on behalf of their wives, and are not alleged in the
complaint to be bringing representative claims on behalf of their
children.
Typically, “a party ‘must assert his own legal rights’ and ‘cannot
rest his claim to relief on the legal rights . . . of third parties.’”
Sessions v. Morales-Santana, 137 S.Ct. 1678, 198 L. Ed. 2d 150, 162
(2017) (quoting Warth v. Seldin, 422 U. S. 490, 499 (1975)). As the
complaint does not allege that the wives of plaintiffs are “hindered”
in any way in bringing their own lawsuit, id.(stating that hindrance
must “stem[] from disability,” not “disinterest,”), and plaintiffs did
not assert representative claims on behalf of minor children, the
claims are theirs alone.