After threat of injunction, Santa Clara church backs away from indoor services
Wednesday's service ended a weeks-long standoff that garnered national attention and cost the church more than $100,000.
SANTA CLARA — A South Bay church has stopped hosting illegal indoor services after the threat of an injunction from the county, ending a weeks-long standoff that captured national attention and ultimately cost the church more than $100,000 in fines.
North Valley Baptist Church in Santa Clara, which has racked up $112,750 for defying the local public health order with indoor gatherings, brought its Wednesday church service outside this week once Santa Clara County officials said they planned to file a temporary restraining order against the church, confirmed county counsel James Williams.
“The fact that we were absolutely going to pursue this made very clear that this is not optional,” Williams said. “It’s essential to our community’s safety.”
The 3,000-person church resumed indoor services starting in late August, quickly accruing $5,000 fines for its twice-weekly gatherings in a rare yet brazen flouting of stay-at-home rules. In a cease-and-desist letter posted to the church’s De La Cruz Boulevard front door, county officials said that leadership did not submit a social distancing protocol, failed to enforce mask-wearing and social distancing and yet allowed parishioners to sing.
Church leadership quickly dug in his heels. In a series of Youtube videos watched by Christians as far afield as North Carolina and Australia, the longtime Pastor Jack Trieber repeatedly defended his decision to host indoor services, arguing that coronavirus’ threat has diminished and explaining that he had cut down the church’s capacity by half.
“Those fines are not legal. It’s a violation of the constitution, and something higher — it’s a violation of the word of God to Christians,” Trieber said in a video posted Aug. 28.
“I do want to say this — we believe the virus is real,” he added.
It wasn’t until the county counsel’s office informed North Valley’s leadership that it was on the cusp of filing a civil injunction this week — in partnership with the Santa Clara County District Attorney — that the church finally backed down. At that point, Williams surmised, the ever-growing fines and threat of legal action were enough to tip the scales.
North Valley did not respond to a request for comment Friday.
“The reality that churches and other religious institutions across our county were successfully holding outdoor services, drive-in services, remote services — and have been — just completely undermines the notion that they needed to have an indoor gathering and create that huge risk of danger,” Williams said.
Still, the saga caught the attention of religious freedom activists nationally, who say that congregations like Trieber’s have been unfairly targeted by shelter-in-place ordinances. The Florida-based law firm Liberty Counsel — which has flagged North Valley in its promotions as a church under attack — recently appealed a similar case involving a Pasadena church to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and plans to file a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court this month to review an Illinois-based case.
“I don’t see how you can justify the complete closure of churches in California,” said Liberty Counsel’s founder Mat Staver. “To suggest that a pandemic can simply erase constitutional rights is frankly a very frightening proposition.”
The church isn’t alone in the Bay Area, either. Calvary Baptist Church in San Jose has likewise accrued fines for indoor services, according to Williams, while Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia said he filed a complaint with the county about St. Cornelius Catholic School in Richmond for the same violation — even though the school said it closed for the 2020-21 school year.
For its part, North Valley has yet to pay off its fines, which the county does not plan to waive, Williams said. As for those framing the discussion in terms of religious freedom, “it just doesn’t resonate.”
“I know in this era of everything becoming politicized that people want to try to find something — a lightning rod — but it just didn’t exist here,” Williams said. “This is about basic public health.”
David DeBolt contributed to this report.