California pays millions after losing case over church closures

California churches fought Gov. Gavin Newsom in courtrooms all over the state over his COVID-19 lockdown orders, before finally beating him in a climactic case at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Now the legal bills have come due, and it’s the state that’s paying them.

California has paid out more than $4 million to a series of churches and other groups that challenged the governor’s stayat-home directives.

Most of the money has been paid to the challengers’ lawyers. Among those collecting attorney’s fees is Harmeet Dhillon, a San Francisco lawyer and prominent California Republican Party official. Dhillon helped represent South Bay United Pentecostal Church in the San Diego area, which prevailed against Newsom at the Supreme Court in February.

On Tuesday, a conservative law firm called the National Center for Law & Policy announced that it’s collecting $400,000 in attorney’s fees from the state for representing a small Lodi congregation that was locked out of its building on Palm Sunday last year, during the early weeks of the pandemic.

Cross Culture Community Church continued to meet for in-person services on Wednesday evenings and Sunday mornings at 760 S. Ham Lane while the governor’s stay-at-home orders were in effect during the first month of the pandemic. San Joaquin County agreed to pay the church itself $100,000.

The church was leasing its space from Bethel Open Bible Church, and attempted to hold services on March 25 when Lodi Police Department officers arrived and informed staff and members it was not allowed to hold services in public under the governor’s stay-at-home order.

A week later, Bethel Open Bible Church changed the locks on the doors to its building to prevent CCCC from entering the premises.

Despite the expense, legal expert Jessica Levinson doesn’t fault the state for fighting in court to defend the stay-at-home orders.

“This is not a big legal screwup,” said Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.

Tide turned against Newsom after Ginsburg’s death

In the first few months of the pandemic, Newsom was beating all legal challenges to his shutdown orders — from churches, businesses and others — in the California courts. And in May 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court backed Newsom’s restrictions on in-person church services on a 5-4 vote.

It wasn’t until after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died last fall, enabling conservatives to cement their control of the court, that the tide turned against Newsom, Levinson said. That led to South Bay United’s victory in February. If Ginsburg hadn’t died, it’s possible the court would have “continued to bless these restrictions,” Levinson said.

The payouts include $1.6 million to South Bay United’s legal team, which included Dhillon and a conservative nonprofit legal center from Chicago called the Thomas More Society. Another conservative nonprofit, Liberty Counsel of Orlando, Fla., shared in a $1.35 million payout for representing a Pasadena church against the state.

Lawyers representing three churches in Mendocino County split $45,000 in attorney’s fees. Meanwhile, the state and Los Angeles County agreed to pay a combined $140,000 to a church called Word Aflame Tabernacle “to fully and finally settle all claims.”

The state also agreed to pay $500,000 to lawyers representing a group of plaintiffs who sued in federal court in San Jose, including Ritesh Tandon, a failed Republican congressional candidate; a member of a Bible study group; and owners of a small winery in Gilroy.

Separately, the state paid $60,000 to owners of two San Diego-area strip clubs. It also paid $75,000 in fees and costs to a group in San Diego County suing over school closures.