California Church Battles $1.2 Million in COVID-Era Fines

Nearly five years after California’s stringent COVID-19 lockdowns, Calvary Chapel San Jose continues to face more than $1.2 million in fines for holding in-person worship services to meet the spiritual needs of its congregation.

The church’s legal battle traces back to August 2020, when Santa Clara County inspectors reportedly conducted 44 visits to the church over the following five months. This stemmed from Pastor Mike McClure’s decision to maintain in-person services despite public health orders that deemed certain businesses “essential,” including retail stores, bars, casinos, restaurants, and even strip clubs, while mandating church closures.

California officials ultimately imposed over $1.2 million in fines on Calvary Chapel for continuing public worship. In response, the church sued Santa Clara County in August 2023, alleging unconstitutional surveillance.

“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. The lawsuit further argued: “The county consistently imposed harsher restrictions on churches and fined Calvary millions of dollars while overlooking other large gatherings,” citing examples such as protests, weddings, and graduation parties.
Recently, the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case. The ACLJ highlighted that Calvary Chapel faced requirements to:

“limit the number of congregants, socially distance the worshippers, ban them from singing, and require them to wear face masks,” even as secular activities and businesses received broad exemptions from COVID rules.

Robert Tyler, president and chief counsel at Advocates for Faith and Freedom, the firm representing Pastor McClure, discussed the case on a recent edition of Washington Watch.

“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,” he told the Washington Stand.

“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,” he stated.

He also explained the escalation to the Supreme Court after California courts upheld the fines (originally higher but reduced substantially):

“[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 addressed the core constitutional issue involving the 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 worshiping.”

Finally, Tyler emphasized the broader stakes:

“[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.”

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