First Liberty Institute on Monday warned city officials in Rowlett, Texas against revoking Freedom Place Church’s certificate of occupancy and thereby shutting down the church. The religious liberty law firm argues that actions to close the church’s doors and prevent it from serving as an early voting site violate the church’s civil rights and Texas law and intends to sue the city if it does not allow the church to continue to operate.
You can read First Liberty’s letter to the city here.
“The City of Rowlett and its mayor are engaged in illegal religious discrimination and election interference,” said Hiram Sasser, Executive General Counsel at First Liberty. “Freedom Place simply wants to serve its community just like thousands of other churches across America that serve as voting sites. For city officials to claim at the last minute that it is somehow improper for a church to serve as a voting location shows blatant religious hostility and flies in the face of American history and tradition. This kind of election interference cannot be tolerated.”
For the second year in a row, Freedom Place Church was chosen by election officials to be Dallas County’s only early voting site in Rowlett. Election officials said that the church meets all the legal requirements to be a voting location. However, in an email to other city officials last September, Rowlett Mayor Robert Margolis said, “Rowlett City Council will not allow voting to occur in any church building. That’s not where voting belongs, and especially when the Pastor of this specific church has endorsed a candidate who will be on the ballot in November.” Mayor Margolis’s hostility to Freedom Place resulted in Dallas County revoking an agreement for the Church to serve as a voting site in 2023. Then this month, just days prior to the start of early voting, the city claims it discovered problems with the church’s certificate of occupancy, though the certificate was issued nearly a year ago. Withdrawing the certificate would force the church to shut down and prevent it from serving as an early voting site.
In its letter, First Liberty argues, “The City’s repeated objections to the Church serving as a voting site in Rowlett reveals the City’s intent to discriminate based on the Church’s religious status… The City’s view that churches should never serve as voting sites is not only contrary to history and widespread practices across Dallas County and the United States, but also demonstrates an intent to discriminate based on religious status that is ‘odious to our Constitution . . . and cannot stand.’”
