US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito speaks to graduating students at Georgetown University Law Center in 2016. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Nevada churches brought an unusually strong challenge to the state’s public health rules, but they lost anyway.

The Supreme Court has ruled, for the second time in the last two months, against a church which sought exemptions from statewide restrictions on houses of worship during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Yet Calvary Chapel Dayton Valley v. Sisolak, a decision handed down on Friday night, is a very different case than South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom, the decision from May in which the Court also ruled against a church that objected to state public health rules. Both decisions were 5-4, with conservative Chief Justice John Roberts crossing over to vote with his four liberal colleagues, but the church in Calvary Chapel presented a much