San Jose's Calvary Chapel has filed a lawsuit against Santa Clara County, alleging the county engaged in invasive and unconstitutional surveillance of the church and its congregants during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the Mercury News, the non-denominational Christian church was previously fined $1.2 million for violating public health mandates, and now accuses the county of conducting "an invasive and warrantless geofencing operation to track residents."
The lawsuit comes after a contentious legal battle between the county and the church over pandemic safety measures. The county has disputed the church's accusations, claiming that it did not use surveillance to track individuals at Calvary Chapel during the pandemic. However, the church insists that data from third-party company SafeGraph was used to monitor worshipers from March 2020 to 2021 and that the surveillance was not only invasive but "downright Orwellian," as the lawsuit describes.
In response to the filing, the county told NBC Bay Area, “The county’s health officer never issued any restrictions specific to churches or religious institutions whatsoever.” Santa Clara County further defended its actions, stating that it only used commercially available aggregate data in response to Calvary's own allegations in a previous lawsuit filed by the church.
At the height of the pandemic, Calvary Chapel held large indoor gatherings with hundreds of maskless attendees, defying public health orders. The county made 44 visits to the church between August 2020 and January 2021, finding large maskless gatherings in violation of health mandates. In November 2020, a judge issued a temporary restraining order against the church, forbidding it from gathering in defiance of public health rules. The ongoing legal clashes have led to over $1 million in fines against the church, although the original penalty demanded by the county was closer to $3 million.
Calvary Chapel's lawsuit contends that the county specifically targeted the church due to its enforcement actions and a "history of discrimination against religion and Calvary Chapel San Jose during the COVID-19 pandemic." The lawsuit further alleges that the county allowed other large gatherings, such as protests, weddings, and graduation parties, to proceed without interference or punishment.
SafeGraph, the Denver-based company whose data was used by the county, set up two geofences around the church—one around the lawn, parking lots, and adjacent streets, and the other covering the church's buildings, including the sanctuary, Calvary Christian Academy, and ministry housing. The church contends that these geofences violated congregants' right to privacy, especially because the "search parameters of their geofencing operation" allowed for data collection in areas including classrooms, the sanctuary, the nursery, and even bathrooms.
Mariah Gondeiro, an attorney with Advocates for Faith and Freedom, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of Calvary Chapel, said the suit was filed to ensure that similar measures would not be used against other churches, noting, “People of faith should never have to worry about the government spying on them in places of worship.”
The county denies that it ever conducted surveillance on individuals at the church, maintaining that its use of geofencing for compliance checks was not unusual and did not involve tracking individuals' cell phones. In a statement to the Mercury News, the county reiterated, “The county’s health officer protected the public during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, in the time before widespread vaccination, by implementing public health measures that were uniform and identical according to the health risks of the activity occurring, regardless of their purpose or type of facility.”
