Two Catholic priests and a trio of Orthodox Jews are suing Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo — accusing them of an “unprecedented abuse of power” in shuttering houses of worship while supporting mass protests.
Upstate priests Rev. Steven Soos and Rev. Nicholas Stamos and Brooklyn Jewish congregants Elchanan Perr, Daniel Schonborn and Mayer Mayerfeld filed a federal lawsuit last week arguing New York’s leaders “exploited the COVID-19 pandemic” to create “a veritable dictatorship” with their lockdown rules.
“These orders, both the emergency stay-home and reopening plan declarations, clearly discriminate against houses of worship,” their attorney, Christopher Ferrara, said in a statement. “They are illegally content-based, elaborate, arbitrary and pseudo-scientific.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James is also named in the suit for helping to enforce the rules, which the lawsuit says have been “exposed as a sham.”
The trio employed a “blatant double standard” in crippling the historic right to worship — while backing mass protests over George Floyd’s death, the lawsuit says.
“Why is a large worship gathering deemed more dangerous than a mass protest, full of shouting, arm-waving people in close proximity to one another?” asked Ferrara, a lawyer for the not-for-profit Thomas More Society.
“It is time to end New York’s experiment in absolute monarchy.”
Hizzoner is singled out for his attacks on “the Jewish community” over large funerals in Brooklyn — while later showing up unmasked at a George Floyd event earlier this month.
The mayor and governor also did not just approve the recent mass protests but expressed clear support for them — despite their earlier dire warnings over any large gatherings, the lawsuit claims.
The Brooklyn plaintiffs said Jewish religious rights were particularly devastated by rules limiting worship to just 10 congregants at a time.
“The synagogue prayers required by their religion must have a minimum quorum of ten adult males (age thirteen or older), called the minyan,” the lawsuit notes.
“A young man could not attend his own Bar Mitzvah … or a bride-to-be her own wedding, or a newborn his own circumcision, nor could plaintiffs themselves attend such services unless they were part of the minyan,” the papers note.
The lawsuit notes that even plans to gradually reopen New York single out places of worship for special limits.
They accuse the governor, attorney general and mayor of violating the plaintiffs’ rights to free exercise of religion, freedom of speech, assembly and expressive association, and due process.
In a response filed Monday, lawyers for Cuomo and James argued that the restrictions don’t violate the plaintiffs’ rights since they are “content neutral and generally applicable, and exist solely to protect public health.”
De Blasio’s lawyers, meanwhile, argued that no “exemption” had been given to the demonstrations, as rules prohibiting gatherings of more than 10 people are still in effect.
“The fact that the City has temporarily relaxed its enforcement of the gathering limitation in the context of the protests out of a need to balance public safety concerns with public health concerns, does not undermine the neutrality or general applicability of the gathering limitation,” the filing states.
Asked for comment, a spokesman for the city’s Law Department told The Post: “The City has to adopt and follow the Governor’s Executive Orders.”
Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi said only: “This is state government: we get sued all the time. That was true before the pandemic and that is true now.”
Additional reporting by Julia Marsh and Bernadette Hogan