Judge Daniel Collins dissented, also reaching the merits:
https://reason.com/2020/05/23/ninth...nge-to-california-closure-one-judge-dissents/
I conclude that Plaintiffs have established a very strong likelihood of success on the merits of their Free Exercise claim….
As a threshold matter, the State contends that, in light of the ongoing pandemic, the constitutional standards that would normally govern our review of a Free Exercise claim should not be applied. "Although the Constitution is not suspended during a state of emergency," the State tells us, "constitutional rights may be reasonably restricted 'as the safety of the general public may demand'" (quoting Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905))…. As the State sees it, there is no "reason why Jacobson would not extend to the First Amendment and other constitutional provisions" (emphasis added).
I am unable to agree with this argument, which seems to me to be fundamentally inconsistent with our constitutional order. Cf. Sterling v. Constantin (1932) ("If this extreme position could be deemed to be well taken, it is manifest that the fiat of a state Governor, and not the Constitution of the United States, would be the supreme law of the land; that the restrictions of the Federal Constitution upon the exercise of state power would be but impotent phrases[.]")…. Nothing in Jacobson supports the view that an emergency displaces normal constitutional standards. Rather, Jacobson provides that an emergency may justify temporary constraints within those standards…. Jacobson merely rejected what we would now call a "substantive due process" challenge to a compulsory vaccination requirement, holding that such a mandate "was within the State's police power." Jacobson's deferential standard of review is appropriate in that limited context. It might have been relevant here if Plaintiffs were asserting a comparable substantive due process claim, but they are not.
https://reason.com/2020/05/23/ninth...nge-to-california-closure-one-judge-dissents/