Mrs. Horrible Has Entered the Chat

Amy Coney Barrett played a decisive role in a Supreme Court ruling for the first time since she was confirmed to the bench last month, and—surprise, surprise—shit sucks ass, she’s that girl we knew she was, etc. etc.

The anti-abortion nightmare in sensible blazers and pearls—at least Anita Bryant had the decency to have some campy panache—joined fellow conservative justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh in a 5-4 decision late Wednesday evening blocking New York from enforcing pandemic-related attendance restrictions on churches, synagogues, and other houses of worship, the Associated Press reports.

The ruling won’t have much of an impact on the ground in New York—the Catholic and Jewish groups that had initially challenged the state’s limits on religious attendance in covid-19 “hot spots” are no longer designated as such—but it does demonstrate the impact that Barrett will have on the court, Politico notes, which now has a 6-3 conservative majority.

Speaking to the press on Thursday, New York governor Andrew Cuomo derided the decision as symbolic—an act of political posturing “irrelevant from any practical impact.”

“Why rule on a case that is moot and come up with a different decision than you did several months ago on the same issue?” Cuomo said, referencing earlier Supreme Court decisions in which the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg and others sided with state governments that sought to impose such restrictions in an effort to slow down transmission.

“You have a different court,” he continued. “I think that was the statement that the court was making.”