(This op-ed was first published in The New York Times on December 1, 2020.)

The balance between Covid-19 precautions and civil liberties doesn’t need to be a partisan issue.

The Supreme Court last week made a major move toward constitutional normalcy: It blocked enforcement of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s hyper-restrictive rules for in-person religious services in New York until the government provides logical justification for treating worship more harshly than seemingly comparable (or riskier) activities.

Unfortunately, the substance of the decision has been drowned out by a single-minded focus on judicial politics — the first evidence that President Trump’s appointments to the court are making a difference.

(Continue reading the op-ed on The New York Times’ page here.)

Michael McConnell is a law professor and director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School. Max Raskin is an adjunct professor of law at New York University.