Supreme Court ruling for Newsom and against the church.
Not a legal expert, but I think this was a forgone conclusion. If you had read the appeal court decision…
We conclude that appellants have not demonstrated a sufficient likelihood of success on appeal. Where state action does not “infringe upon or restrict practices because of their religious motivation” and does not “in a selective manner impose burdens only on conduct motivated by religious belief,” it does not violate the First Amendment.
1A only covers religion, not meeting in some building somewhere.
The church could have done the whole thing differently and won.
For instance, if they had 3 services with 1/3 of the congregation at each one, by appointment only, and following CDC guidelines, then they could well have prevailed.
An even more interesting case would have been for them to attack the state's numbers and guidelines on scientific grounds and show that the state's guidelines were religiously motivated not based on science. But that never happened.