Almost three years after the COVID-19 pandemic was officially declared over, a church in California is still facing over $1.2 million in fines for keeping its doors open to minister to the spiritual needs of the public.

Calvary Chapel San Jose’s legal saga began in August 2020 when county inspectors reportedly â€œmade 44 visits to the church” over the next five months due to Pastor Mike McClure’s refusal to cancel the church’s in-person services. At the time, California’s public health orders that regulated which businesses could remain open due to being deemed “essential” notably favored retail stores, bars, casinos, and restaurants, while requiring churches to remain closed. At one point, even strip clubs were allowed to remain open while other businesses were required to close.

State officials eventually ordered Calvary Chapel to pay over $1.2 million in fines for continuing to hold public services. But the church fought back by filing a lawsuit against Santa Clara County in August 2023, claiming that county officials surveilled the church in violation of its constitutional rights.

“This type of expansive geofencing operation is not only an invasion of privacy but represents a terrifying precedent if allowed to go unaddressed,” the suit stated. It went on to note, “The county consistently imposed harsher restrictions on churches and fined Calvary millions of dollars while overlooking other large gatherings,” citing protests, weddings, and graduation parties.

On Monday, the American Center for Law and Justice petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the case. The ACLJ pointed out that Calvary Chapel was specifically required to, at various times, “limit the number of congregants, socially distance the worshippers, ban them from singing, and require them to wear face masks,” while various other gatherings and businesses were allowed a wide range of exceptions to the COVID-19 rules.

Robert Tyler, who serves as president and chief counsel at Advocates for Faith and Freedom, the firm representing Pastor Mike McClure, joined Tuesday’s edition of “Washington Watch” to analyze the case.

“[L]et’s not forget that five years ago we were in lockdown, particularly here in California,” he recounted. “Californians were told, you can’t go to church, you can’t worship, you can’t sit down in a service, you can’t sing, you can’t raise your hands, you can’t lay your hands on people, you can’t take Communion, you can’t be baptized. Uh, these were things that were going on in California … five years ago.”

Tyler continued, “Pastor Mike McClure and the church had a restraining order that we were fighting off. Pastor Mike was being brought up on contempt charges in December [2020] and again in January [2021]. And so we fought, and Pastor Mike [was] convicted in his heart saying, ‘This isn’t right. We have a First Amendment and we have a right to worship, and the government can’t come in and tell us that you cannot pray with someone and lay hands on them.’ Especially when at the time people were not mass dying from COVID. They were dying from suicide, kids were being abused by their abusers, locked in homes. It was a horrible time. And so Mike is standing and continues to stand, and we’re standing with him five years later.”

Tyler further described how Calvary Chapel was forced to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court due to the failures of the California court system. “[T]hey issued $1.2 million in fines [and] upheld those fines. … Although, they started out [at] $4 million, we got them down substantially. But here we are today and a church is being fined. Not much different than what we’re seeing in South Korea right now, where you have just a lot of craziness going on over there with this new president over there. We’ve got to be careful here in the United States.”

Tyler went on to elaborate on how part of what is at issue in the case is a disputed definition of the Constitution’s free exercise clause.

“[B]ack in the 1990, Justice [Antonin] Scalia actually gave us this pretty bad interpretation of the free exercise clause,” he explained. “We’ve had some development positively, and frankly, if the California courts had had applied the law as the U.S. Supreme Court gave us some interpretation back five years ago, … we wouldn’t be here today, but they didn’t apply it that way. … [I]t said you can’t go around and allow Costco and liquor stores to remain open and … not allow churches to remain open. … And here they’re trying to say, ‘Well, this is about masks. You have to be wearing masks.’ And Pastor Mike is saying, ‘Look, I’m a pastor. I’m not the mask police. If people want to come in and worship, we allow them to come in and worship.’ We’re saying that the government shouldn’t have the right to be able to step in and dictate how people are worshipping.”

Tyler concluded by underscoring that the Calvary Chapel case could have wide-ranging implications for the freedom of worship in the U.S.

“[W]e’re actually asking for the court to take another look at how [it] analyzes free exercise and actually go back to how it used to look at the free exercise clause, even before it did in the early 1990s, when the free exercise clause meant much more,” he contended. “… [W]hat happened is they weakened it so that government had a lot more leverage over churches and the free exercise of religion. We’re trying to give the leverage back to the free exercise of religion and take it away from the government.”

Originally published by The Washington Stand

The post California Church Appeals to SCOTUS over $1.2M in COVID-19 Fines appeared first on The Daily Signal.