A San Jose Christian church is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to stop Santa Clara County from continuing to demand the congregation pay $1.2 million in fines for holding worship services during the Covid pandemic in defiance of county health orders, even though the high court had already declared a pandemic alone doesn’t give state or local public health officials the power to cancel First Amendment religious liberties.
And the church has been joined before the court by a lineup of civil and religious liberties advocates, all of whom are asking the court to step in and deliver a message to California courts and other officials that they cannot collect fines for supposed violations of unconstitutional edicts.
“The essence of the matter is that Calvary Chapel San José practiced its faith within the rightful parameters of the First Amendment,” wrote the constitutional freedoms advocacy organization, the Pacific Justice Institute, in a brief filed in support of the church.
“Yet even now government officials continue to grasp at a $1.2 million windfall when they were the violators of our nation’s most cherished liberties.
“This Court should not reward them.”
The case landed before the Supreme Court in December 2025, after a California state appeals court refused to block Santa Clara County from imposing hefty fines on the church, known as Calvary Chapel San Jose.
The non-denominational evangelical Christian congregation has squared off in court against Santa Clara County since 2020, when the county sought to force the congregation, along with all other churches, to shut down indoor, in-person worship services amid the Covid pandemic, and, later, abide by the California state mask mandate.
Calvary Chapel refused to comply with those orders, saying they believed their faith compelled them to continue meeting together, despite the government edicts, and to not require worshippers in the church to wear masks.
They asserted the orders amounted to unconstitutional violations of their First Amendment religious exercise rights.
In May 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down struck down limits on worship imposed by the state of New York. The court majority said officials had unconstitutionally discriminated against religion in imposing the restrictions, while allowing comparable secular gathering spots to remain open and operational amid the pandemic, by claiming those other facilities were “essential.”
That ruling was reinforced in April 2021 by an order from the Supreme Court declaring a federal appeals court was wrong to deny an injunction sought by California residents to allow them to conduct in-home Bible studies, despite health officials’ orders banning such gatherings.
In the order, known as Tandon v Newsom, the high court majority – noting the case marked the fifth time they had been required to address unconstitutional restrictions against religious gatherings by California authorities amid the Covid pandemic – explicitly declared state and local officials could not target religious gatherings for shutdown, while allowing secular activities to continue.
While most states and other public health agencies moved quickly to lift restrictions on worship services and religious gatherings in light of the Supreme Court’s orders, the county of Santa Clara remained defiant, continuing to attempt to enforce the shutdown order on Calvary Chapel and other churches.
A California appellate court ultimately struck down the orders themselves, saying the U.S. Supreme Court had made clear such restrictions were unconstitutional.
However, despite that order, Santa Clara County then moved instead to levy fines against Calvary Chapel of up to $5,000 per day for allegedly violating the pandemic emergency orders.
The county attempted to win court orders allowing it to collect more than $2.8 million in fines. A court reduced the fines to $1.2 million.
But a California appellate court ultimately upheld the fines, saying they should be allowed, even if they were based on orders the Supreme Court and California courts had declared unconstitutional.
In the ruling, the California appeals court asserted the fines should be allowed, in part, because they were “generally applicable” and not just targeted at the church itself.
Calvary Chapel then moved to seek relief from the U.S. Supreme Court once more, asking the court to step in and declare the lower courts were wrong to allow Santa Clara County to continue to seek to enforce the fines based on the Covid gathering bans and mask orders.
Calvary Chapel is represented in the action by attorneys from the religious and civil liberties organizations Advocates for Faith & Freedom, of Murrieta, California, and the American Center for Law & Justice, of Washington, D.C.
“Government officials cannot weaponize emergencies to suspend constitutional rights,” said Erin Mersino, vice president & chief of Supreme Court and appellate litigation for Advocates for Faith & Freedom, in a statement announcing the filing of the Supreme Court petition.
“This case represents one of the most aggressive attacks on church autonomy and religious liberty in recent history. The Constitution does not evaporate in a crisis,” Mersino said.
Santa Clara County has not yet responded to the petition before the Supreme Court.
However, in recent days, a collection of allies have filed briefs at the Supreme Court in support of the San Jose church.
These included briefs from the Pacific Justice Institute, the Liberty Justice Center, and the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative constitutional legal advocacy group which has racked up numerous wins before the high court on questions particularly involving First Amendment religious freedoms and speech rights, as well as parental rights.
In its filing, the Alliance Defending Freedom asserted Santa Clara County’s refusal to abandon the fines against the church remained in keeping with “California’s contemporaneous hostility” to religion.
“Throughout the pandemic, California consistently singled out religious actors for harsh treatment,” the ADF wrote. “And Respondents’ (Santa Clara County’s) treatment of the Chapel itself aligns with California’s broader campaign of hostility to religious gatherings.”
They argued this perceived hostility to the church and religion, in general, should also serve to invalidate the fines sought by the county.
The Pacific Justice Institute cited a statement made by
“I don’t feel comfortable being in that position of saying, ‘You know, your constitutional rights don’t really matter right now,’ but I’ve had to. Right now we’re putting parts of the Constitution on hold. We really are. Freedom of assembly. Right to practice religion.”
The Liberty Justice Center, an Austin, Texas-based constitutional legal advocacy organization, called the case “easy, but necessary.”
“Santa Clara county’s COVID restrictions were unconstitutional,” the LJC wrote in its brief. “It cannot impose fines for alleged violations of unconstitutional regulations.”
And the church was further backed by a brief filed by the attorneys general of 20 states, who urged the Supreme Court to take up the case to send a message to the California courts and others who would seek to continue to try to use emergencies to sidestep constitutional rights – and particularly target religious exercise.
The brief was submitted by the office of West Virginia Attorney General John B. McCuskey and was joined by the attorneys general of 19 other states, including Texas, Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, Alaska, Alabama, Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah and South Dakota.
“… This Court needs to remind lower courts that they can’t relegate free exercise to disfavored status,” the attorneys general wrote. “… Lower courts need clear guardrails—or they’ll continue veering into making value judgments and calling it constitutional adherence.”
The Supreme Court has not yet indicated if it will take up the case.
