California Megachurch Sues State After Holding Indoor Services With Thousands

Grace Community Church argues California unfairly restricts churches while allowing peaceful protests against racism and police brutality in the wake of George Floyd’s death, violating the state’s constitution.

Though the Supreme Court ruled in May that California’s coronavirus restrictions do not discriminate against religious groups, the church’s lawyers specifically use the protests to argue the state is now showing “blatant favoritism.”

The lawsuit comes after the church started holding indoor services with thousands of people last month, with Pastor John MacArthur telling CNN Tuesday that 6,000 or 7,000 people showed up because congregants “didn’t buy the deadly narrative” about the pandemic.

The services flout state law, which allows indoor religious services at 25% capacity or 100 people, whichever is lower, and bans singing and chanting inside.

Los Angeles County attorneys sent a cease and desist letter in late-July to the church that threatened arrest or $1,000 per day fine.

The church argues that no members have thus far been infected, and that government officials who issue orders regulating worship “arrogates to himself authority that God expressly grants only to the Lord Jesus Christ as sovereign over His Kingdom, which is the church,” according to a statement on its website.

Newsom’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Forbes.