The Archdiocese of Washington filed a lawsuit on Dec. 11, 2020, petitioning the D.C. District Court to lift the 50-person cap on indoor religious gatherings in the District of Columbia.  In the suit, the Archdiocese contends that this restriction, which was imposed by a Nov. 23 executive order issued by D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause, and the First Amendment’s guarantees of freedom of speech, assembly, and association. 

The archdiocese claims that the District’s hard cap on religious services singles out religious groups for more restrictive COVID-19 limitations on public gatherings compared to those placed on businesses and other venues in the city.

In an interview with journalist Christiane Amanpour for CNN International and PBS, Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the archbishop of Washington, noted that the archdiocese has been committed to following strict safety protocols during the coronavirus pandemic, which in local Catholic churches has included mandatory mask wearing, social distancing and sanitizing. Parishes have also been livestreaming Masses for people to watch at home since coronavirus restrictions began.

“We do believe that we should, as religious people, be allowed the same latitude that other public structures are – such as grocery stores and other public venues that have no limits or at least very generous limits. Too often, churches and other houses of worship have more restrictions,” Cardinal Gregory said in that interview. “We, here in the Archdiocese of Washington, have received no cases - at least none that we know of - where people have been infected by attending church. So we have asked for at least the possibility of proportional attendance. We just think we should not be treated any differently and certainly not unfairly in comparison to other public places for attendance.”

Father Daniel Carson, the vicar general and moderator of the Curia for the Archdiocese of Washington, said in a Dec. 14 interview with the Catholic Standard that the archdiocese is seeking to have the District of Columbia remove that imposed cap of 50 people able to attend religious gatherings in churches in the District, and instead “implement a percentage (limit), based upon capacity of the worship space of the building.”

The priest noted that surrounding Maryland jurisdictions responding to the COVID-19 pandemic have currently implemented limitations on attendance at worship services based on a percentage of the seating capacity of the building, with the limit now being 50 percent in Southern Maryland and up to 25 percent in both Prince George’s and Montgomery counties.

After Mayor Bowser and Maryland officials declared a public health emergency in March due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Archdiocese of Washington suspended its public Masses in the District of Columbia and in the five surrounding Maryland counties, and resumed them after Memorial Day as local jurisdictions began allowing indoor public gatherings at places like churches and non-essential businesses to resume with safety restrictions.

In their interviews, both Cardinal Gregory and Father Carson noted that since public Masses have resumed in the archdiocese with those strict safety measures, there have been no known cases of people being infected with COVID-19 by attending Mass in local Catholic churches.

“I consider the need for public worship as essential to the well-being of the faithful, and since we’ve reopened, we’ve done it safely,” Father Carson said. He added, “There’s no reason to think we can’t continue safe worship.”

In a Dec. 11 letter to priests of the archdiocese announcing the lawsuit, Father Carson said, “We were disappointed by the mayor’s recent executive order, issued just before the start of Advent, which imposes a 50-person cap on Mass capacity. These restrictions single out religious worship for harsher treatment than similar secular activities, such as shopping, dining, and exercising. We have tried to address our concerns directly with the District government and requested relief from a hard cap on attendance at indoor religious services. Unfortunately, as Christmas fast approaches, these burdensome restrictions remain in place. As a last resort, earlier today we filed suit in federal court to request judicial relief from the District’s hard cap on indoor religious worship.” 

In that letter, the priest also pointed to a recent Supreme Court case involving COVID-19 restrictions on churches.

“As the Supreme Court recently stated in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, hard caps on worship attendance ‘effectively bar many from attending religious services’ and ‘many other less restrictive rules . . . could be adopted,’ including the percentage-based restrictions the District uses for many different types of businesses and activities.”

Father Carson in his Dec. 14 interview noted that pastors in the District of Columbia have said those restrictions prevent them from ministering to some of their parishioners, whom they’ve had to turn away from attending Mass because of the 50-person cap.

He noted how the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, the largest Catholic church in North America, can seat 3,000 worshipers. Only allowing 50 people to attend Mass there is unreasonable, he said, adding, “In any of our churches, it’s unreasonable.”

In a Dec. 7 letter to Mayor Bowser asking her to remove the fixed cap on houses of worship, the archdiocese noted, “If the shrine were converted into a fitness center, the District’s rules would permit more than 600 people to exercise there.”

Washington Auxiliary Bishop Mario Dorsonville gives Communion to a woman at a Dec. 12, 2020 Mass at St. Matthew's Cathedral.  (CS photo/Andrew Biraj)

The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, and listed the Roman Catholic archbishop of Washington representing the archdiocese as the plaintiff, and the defendants as Mayor Bowser and the District of Columbia. The suit was submitted by attorneys from Jones Day and the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.

Noting that as Christmas approaches, the District has imposed 50-person caps on Mass attendance, even for masked, socially distanced services in churches that in many cases can seat more than 1,000 people, the suit said, “These restrictions are unscientific, in that they bear no relation to either the size of the building or the safety of the activity. These restrictions are discriminatory, in that they single out religious worship as a disfavored activity, even though it has been proven safer than many other activities the District favors.”

The lawsuit pointed out that the restrictions on the number of people allowed to attend church is stricter than its capacity-based limits on public libraries, personal service businesses and indoor dining facilities, and on gyms and fitness centers that have limits based on square footage. 

“By adopting policies that facially discriminate against houses of worship, defendants have targeted plaintiff’s religious activities for discrimination and chilled the free exercise of religion,” the lawsuit said, charging that the District of Columbia’s current limits on the sizes of church attendance violate protections guaranteed by the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

The lawsuit requested that the court “issue temporary, preliminary and permanent injunctive relief prohibiting defendants from enforcing their unlawful policies against plaintiff’s religious beliefs and activities.”

The documentation for the lawsuit also noted that the Catholic Church and its ministries have “been on the front lines of responding to the COVID crisis,” including Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington, which has served more than one million meals since the pandemic began.

A Dec. 11 tweet from @BECKETlaw summarizing the lawsuit said that because of the District’s 50-person cap on Mass attendance, “D.C. is telling churches that there is no room at the inn this Christmas.”

The importance of the Christmas season for the faithful was underscored in the lawsuit, which noted, “Christmas should be a time for reconciliation and joy, and the archdiocese simply wants to welcome its flock home. It respectfully requests that it be allowed to do so.”