The Supreme Court’s Hands-Off Approach to Religious Questions in the Era of COVID-19 and Beyond

Prof. Levine’s article suggests that, taken together, judicial rulings and rhetoric during the July 2020 religious gathering SCOTUS cases demonstrate that the “hands-off approach” to religious practice and belief cases remains, at once, both vibrant and vulnerable. These cases offer a poignant example of the difficulties the hands-off approach imposes on judges when the proper resolution of a case seems to require, at least in part, a measure of inquiry into the substantive doctrine underlying a religious practice.