The Empire Strikes Back

As I've reported here, Los Angeles County has been unable to secure a temporary restraining order against Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, CA to stop it from holding indoor services that include singing, but without masks or social distancing. On Sunday, the county public works department sent the church a letter giving notice that it was terminating the month-to-month lease of county land for part of the church parking lot, effective October 1.

The best discussion of the story is at The Federalist. Another story with additional detail is here.

There are likely to be further legal developments. The church's counsel, Jenna Ellis, released a statement:

“Los Angeles County is retaliating against Grace Community Church for simply exercising their constitutionally protected right to hold church and challenging an unreasonable, unlawful health order,” Ellis said.

“The Church has peacefully held this lease for 45 years and the only reason the County is attempting eviction is because John MacArthur stood up to their unconstitutional power grab. This is harassment, abusive, and unconscionable,” Ellis added.

As of this morning, the Thomas More Society, which is representing the church, has no statement on its website. I would guess that the church and its counsel will pursue some type of legal redress, but they aren't telegraphing their strategy. As a legal amateur, it seems to me that one avenue would be the doctrine of estoppel. On one hand, although the rental agreement is month-to-month, the church has relied for 45 years on the continuation of this agreement.

In addition,

Collateral estoppel, sometimes known as estoppel by judgment, prevents the re-argument of a factual or legal issue that has already been determined by a valid judgment in a prior case involving the same parties.

It appears that the church's counsel may attempt to argue that the county is trying to gain a result by terminating a contract that they could not obtain in court -- and in doing so, they're violating the church's constitutional rights. But we'll have to see how this develops.

In the case of North Valley Baptist Church in Santa Clara, CA, Pastor Jack Trieber says in this YouTube broadcast that, although the country health department fines the church $5,000 for each service held indoors with singing, the church has the financial resources simply to pay these fines and continue holding the services. This, of course, is completely in the spirit of Dr King's "Letter From Birmingham Jail".

This story explains that $5,000 per service is the maximum penalty the county health department can impose, which is leaving the county in a difficult situation. According to the story, the county is investigating how it may be able to enforce its order now that the maximum penalty isn't working.

However, the measures at the county level in California are taking place in the context of steadily improving COVID statistics. Beyond that, the US Center for Disease Control has been revising its published statistics to respond to long-expressed concerns that definitions of COVID conditions wildly inflate the numbers.

For instance, the CDC updated its website has to show that only 6% of all coronavirus deaths were completely due to the coronavirus alone. This gives a total of 9,210 deaths, not the nearly 200,000 widely cited.

This information from a recognized government source is likely to be used in further legal proceedings that argue, in part, that restrictions on worship have not been tailored to the actual risk.

Remarks by our clergy during yesterday's mass, though, suggest there's an understanding that county authorities intend to continue these restrictions indefinitely. As a result, the legal cases being brought by the Evangelical parishes in California will, at least we hope, bring about benefit for all churches.