LOUISVILLE, Ky. (Legal Newsline) - Liberty Counsel chairman and attorney Mathew Staver remembers the day when Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear told churchgoers during the pandemic that they couldn’t practice religion from their cars.
“It was a total ban on worship even in the parking lot,” Staver told Legal Newsline. “In fact, on Easter Sunday when they had a parking lot service, the governor sent out law enforcement to issue citations to those people in the parking lot that had their windows rolled up.”
That fateful day led Maryville Baptist Church and its pastor, Dr. Jack Roberts, to sue Gov. Beshear.
“Even though they were sitting in their cars, they were given a 14-day quarantine notice that the driver and all of the passengers had to be in quarantine," said Staver who represented the plaintiffs. "They couldn't leave their county for 14 days and they couldn't ride public transportation, including EMS transport, without getting prior approval from the county."
State Attorney General Daniel Cameron tried to warn Beshear with an amicus brief submitted in April 2020 that said his order forbidding mass gatherings for religious services was “quintessential discrimination.”
All non-life-sustaining businesses were ordered closed. Cameron wrote, “Just as troubling is Governor Beshear’s refusal to define religious activity as ‘life-sustaining’ for those Kentuckians with sincerely held beliefs about communal worship.”
After his initial order in March 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic began, Beshear on April 10, 2020, held a press conference to announce Kentucky State Police would collect license plate numbers of all people who attended church on Easter Sunday. He threatened those worshippers with misdemeanors.
Troopers followed his instructions that Sunday at Maryville. Roberts received a notice of a misdemeanor violation and became a co-plaintiff in Maryville’s lawsuit.
The trial court refused their motion for temporary restraining order/preliminary injunction, but they appealed to the Sixth Circuit. That court granted an emergency injunction pending appeal, and the trial judge then granted a preliminary injunction after the Sixth Circuit had written the plaintiffs were likely to succeed.
The appeal was dismissed as moot, since the trial judge had entered the preliminary injunction. Meanwhile, the Kentucky General Assembly passed four measures to restrict the governor’s emergency powers.
“Gov. Beshear is very anti-religious and very anti-freedom and anti-first amendment because he was also saying that you could shop at the big box retail centers and all the other stores without very many restrictions and then abortion clinics were essential services, but you couldn't even go to church in the parking lot,” Staver said.
Now, Staver is seeking an order awarding the plaintiffs, Maryville Baptist Church, $390,556.88 for reasonable attorney’s fees and $1,554.84 in nontaxable expenses.
“I'm sure Kentucky is not going to want to pay it so they'll probably not just fork over a check,” Staver added. “They will probably come back with some opposition to it but I don't see much room that they can argue because we got all the relief that we requested, which was a preliminary injunction to grant freedom to worship and stop the restrictions and that happened.”
As previously reported in the Southern California Record, in May 2021, California Gov. Gavin Newsom agreed to pay $1.3 million to Liberty Counsel for attorneys fees and costs to settle litigation brought on behalf of Harvest Rock Church and Harvest Rock International Ministries. The settlement includes a statewide injunction against COVID-19 restrictions imposed upon places of worship in California.
"The difference was that in California, it was a no worship ban and for many months in Kentucky, it started off as a no-worship ban as well and that's when we stopped it early on," Staver added. "Maryville Baptist Church v Gov. Beshear was the first court of appeals decision in the country. We won 3-0 twice."
In the Kentucky case, five lawyers and a legal assistant billed for 738 hours for a total of $312,445.50. Lawyers billed between $375 and $525 per hour and seek a multiplier of 1.25.