When attorney Dean Broyles wrote a letter to Gov. Gavin Newson early in the pandemic last year asking him politely to treat churches as essential services and businesses, he got no response.
“If he'd done so, the state would have avoided paying out more than $5 million in attorney's fees and they would have avoided being embarrassed at the U.S. Supreme Court five times,” said Broyles, president and chief counsel of the National Center for Law & Policy in Escondido. “This whole issue would have been avoided if he had simply treated churches equally to other businesses and organizations that were deemed essential.”
Broyles is among the lawyer plaintiffs who have been awarded attorneys' fees in settlements with the state due to unequal COVID-19 restrictions imposed upon houses of worship.
“There was a lack of wisdom and foresight and any acknowledgment of the First Amendment from California in being the first state to shut down and the only state to ban indoor singing and worship at places of worship,” he said.
Broyles sued Newsom in the Eastern District of California federal court on behalf of Cross Culture Christian Center (CCCC) of Lodi and its pastor Jon Duncan, and Cornerstone Church of Fresno and its Pastor Jim Franklin.
“Fresno County never aggressively enforced the COVID restrictions on Cornerstone Church whereas in San Joaquin County, the opposite is true,” Broyles told the Southern California Record. “They very aggressively in a targeted way enforced the orders, causing them to leave the building. My client still doesn't have a building today. The impact of damage was far more severe for Cross Culture.”
The state of California agreed to pay $400,000 in attorney fees to end the litigation while the case was pending on appeal in the 9th Circuit and San Joaquin County agreed to pay $100,000 to CCCC.
“One of the driving factors to the settlement was the Tandon versus Newsom victory at the U.S. Supreme Court, which involved a Santa Clara County home Bible study that was meeting and within two weeks of that ruling, California removed the mandatory capacity limits and removed the indoor singing ban, which were the two outstanding issues at that time,” Broyles said.
In Ritesh Tandon v. Gavin Newsom, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that churches were irreparably harmed by the loss of free exercise rights for even minimal periods of time and that the State had not shown that public health would be imperiled by employing less restrictive measures.
“The main driving factor was the U.S. Constitution and the constitutional holding by the U.S. Supreme Court affirming the First Amendment,” Broyles added. “The fact that we had to fight for the right to hold services indicates to me that our Constitution, including our First Amendment rights, are in a precarious position if we have to go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and back to protect our right to the free exercise of religion.”
The National Center for Law & Policy is a nonprofit and tax-exempt organization.
“We will use those funds to continue to do the work that we do in the First Amendment areas including pro-life, freedom of speech, and free exercise of religion,” Broyles said. “Those are the kinds of cases and projects we'll use those monies for in the future. We will put the money to good use to continue to advocate for people's civil rights.”