In Gaskins v. McLean Bible Church, (VA Ct. App., May 19, 2026), a Virginia state appellate court allowed dissident members of a non-denominational congregational church to engage in limited discovery in connection with their challenge to the election of the church's Board of Elders. The Church's constitution provides that members who have not attended church services for eight consecutive weeks “without reasonable excuse” become inactive members who may not vote or hold office in the church. Plaintiffs claim that the Board designated a number of members as "inactive" on an arbitrary basis. The court remanded the case for the trial court to first determine whether disclosure of information sought by plaintiffs would violate association rights of church members, officers or employees. If it would not, the appellate court held that limited discovery on reclassification of members may proceed, saying in part:
The number eight is neutral. That is the number of consecutive weeks of worship services a member must miss before the Board may deem them inactive. If a member who has not missed eight consecutive weeks is declared inactive, the Board has violated the MBC constitution. And that is exactly what the dissenters allege happened here. This Court, and all other courts in Virginia, are surely able to count to eight without entering a “religious thicket.”...
MBC counters that the eight-weeks inquiry is not, in fact, neutral because the eight weeks must be missed “without reasonable excuse.” It argues that what constitutes a reasonable excuse is a purely ecclesiastical question, and thus one outside this Court’s bailiwick (and its jurisdiction). It may be, of course, that the documents the dissenters seek in discovery reflect that all disenfranchised members missed eight consecutive weeks of worship services and that the Board determined that they did so “without reasonable excuse.” In that case, this dispute would be at an end; no secular court could second-guess the Board’s earnest opinion as to what constitutes a reasonable excuse. But until that happens, our courts retain jurisdiction. And it may also develop that no “reasonable excuses” were sought or tendered and that certain members of the congregation were simply trimmed from the voting lists to influence the outcome of elections. In sum, an assertion that a dispute might involve a purely religious question is quite different from an assertion that the dispute will turn on such a question. The latter is a good reason to apply the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine and short-circuit the litigation; the former is not....
We ... find nothing objectionable about allowing limited discovery to determine whether the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine applies....
In ruling against MBC on this point, we embrace the perhaps subtle—but meaningful— distinction between a religious institution being “above the law” and being subject to the law while still wielding significant privileges and protections....
Christian Post reports on the decision.
