Church's Challenge To Exclusion From Jail's Treatment Programs Is Dismissed

The Santa Rosa (FL) Press Gazette reports that last week a Florida federal district court dismissed a civil rights lawsuit that had been brought against the Santa Rosa County (FL) Sheriff's Office by a church and its pastor. The First Apostolic Church of Milton and its pastor Larry Webb claimed that the county jail's Interfaith Ministries Board and Sheriff Wendell Hall had excluded the church's substance abuse treatment program from the jail because of doctrinal differences over proper baptism rites. (See prior posting.) The jail's chaplain, however, says that the Church refused to permit anyone from the Interfaith Ministries Board to work with the program. Only members of the First Apostolic Church could run the classes. The jail changed treatment programs when the church stopped furnishing class rosters to the jail.