El Cajon, CA—The Orwellian order by California state officials to take away lunch money from children in low-income and immigrant families because they attended a Christian preschool in El Cajon, California was completely reversed after a major federal civil rights lawsuit in San Diego was resolved in the favor of plaintiffs. California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s Department of Justice was forced to concede a major defeat in a significant victory for religious freedom this week against the California Department of Social Services (“CDSS”) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (“USDA”).
The Church of Compassion (“the church”) and its Dayspring Christian Learning Center (“Dayspring” or “preschool”) have been actively loving their neighbors in El Cajon for nearly twenty years by identifying and meeting needs in their unique community. El Cajon is home to many immigrant and low-income families. Dayspring is a place where all children and parents are accepted and loved, where laughter and play are cherished and where children’s spiritual, emotional and physical needs are met. Dayspring’s biblically orthodox Christian statement of faith is clear to everyone and the preschool welcomes all families, including LGBTQ. However, the school will not promote ideologies which conflict with their sincerely held religious beliefs.
The Child and Adult Care Food Program (“Food Program”) is a federal program administered by the United States Department of Agriculture providing supplemental reimbursements for meals and snacks to eligible children who are enrolled for care at participating child care centers. One way that Dayspring demonstrates God’s love to its community is by participating in the USDA Food Program administered by the CDSS where public funds are allocated to help feed indigent children. Approximately 40% of Dayspring students qualify for free meals under the Food Program.
However, Dayspring’s Food Program participation was abruptly suspended on December 29, 2022 because the CDSS falsely believed that it had the authority to force Dayspring to comply with a 2022 directive from the USDA that redefined “sex” discrimination in Title IX to include “gender identity” and “sexual orientation.” The CDSS aggressively demanded that both the Church and Dayspring bring all policies and practices, not just the lunch line, into alignment with the new guidance. Furthermore, the CDSS sought to unfairly punish Dayspring by placing the Christian school on the National Disqualified List, cutting them off from any and all government funding sources. And yet, the faithful and courageous church stood its ground and refused to capitulate to the state’s coercive pressure.
The CDSS’s overbearing and unconstitutional demands were far reaching, ordering the church and preschool to immediately and completely align all of its hiring decisions, restroom usage, dress code and pronouns to the government’s new divergent sexual orthodoxy. The CDSS foolishly proceeded to withdraw Food Program funds from the preschool, in spite of being warned by the National Center for Law & Policy (“NCLP”) that to do so was in blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution, specifically the First Amendment.
It is well established that when the government denies a church “an otherwise available public benefit on account of its religious status,” it violates the religious Free Exercise Clause of the U.S. Constitution. See Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer, 582 U.S. 449 (2017). Indeed, well established federal law prohibits government agencies from discriminating against religious organizations because of their convictions and affiliations. And government agencies cannot dictate to religious organizations, like the Church of Compassion and its preschool, what their beliefs are or whom they can or cannot hire. If we are going to maintain religious freedom, a religious institution must not be forced to compromise or abandon its beliefs or practices regarding human sexuality in order to continue loving and serving its community.
After the CDSS ignored the NCLP’s cease and desist demand letter, a federal civil rights lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, challenging the CDSS’s unconstitutional choice to permanently cut off public funding allocated to the Dayspring Christian Learning Center to feed needy children. The lawsuit included causes of action for deprivation of the free exercise of religion, deprivation of the freedom of speech, violation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and violations of the federal Administrative Procedures Act. Plaintiffs were represented by a legal team comprised of attorneys with the NCLP, the Alliance Defending Freedom (“ADF”) and Advocates for Faith and Freedom (“AFF”).
To the great benefit of needy families in El Cajon and all across California, this was an unusually quick victory. Once California was forced to realize it had committed constitutional and statutory violations, DOJ attorneys begged to settle the case before the court even had the opportunity to rule on the merits of the case. The government’s total surrender began almost immediately after an amended complaint and motion for preliminary injunction were filed in June 2023 (see links below). The settlement agreement, signed on October 11, 2022, is a total victory for religious freedom in the Golden State and beyond and is a vindication for the Church of Compassion and Dayspring. The settlement terms, however, took more than three months to complete before the case could be dismissed.
In the very favorable settlement, the CDSS fully reinstated Dayspring in the Food Program, agreed to reimburse Dayspring all of the Food Program costs it unlawfully suspended and removed the Christian preschool from the National Disqualified List. Furthermore, this resolution benefits all similarly situated religious institutions in California because the CDSS also agreed to issue guidance to all California food program participants regarding the availability of federal and state exemptions for religious institutions whose tenets conflict with the new sexual orientation and gender identity non-discrimination provisions. The CDSS has also agreed to pay $160,000 in attorneys’ fees to the Church of Compassion’s legal team.
Constitutional attorney Dean Broyles, chief counsel of the NCLP and who serves on the legal team representing the plaintiffs, said, “California must never be permitted to prioritize its extreme sexual ideological aims over the needs of hungry children. It is profoundly unethical and immoral that California officials so flagrantly ignored their oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution and deliberately decided to hold hungry children hostage to their draconian desire to coercively control the religious beliefs, observances and practices of a Christian church and its religious preschool. The government must never be allowed to compel citizens to adopt its favored ideas, suppress our religious beliefs or force us to comply with or express only state-approved messages about human sexuality. All overreaching government attempts to instigate hostile takeovers of our places of worship and religious institutions will be strongly resisted and will not stand. We had a fantastic legal team, but God gets all the glory for this victory.” Broyles continued, “We are glad that we decided to bring in our friends at ADF as co-counsel because of their recent similar win against the USDA in Florida. Jeremiah Galus and the ADF team did a fantastic job.”
Dean Broyles of the National Center for Law & Policy and Mariah Gondeiro and Julianne Fleischer of Advocates for Faith and Freedom first filed the case, Church of Compassion v. Johnson, on behalf of the church and preschool in March 2023. These attorneys are three of more than 4,700 lawyers who are part of the ADF Allied Attorney Network.
In a similar case in 2021, Grant Park Christian Academy v. Fried, ADF attorneys successfully advocated on behalf of a Christian school in Florida that sued the Biden administration for threatening to pull the school’s lunch program funding because of its religious beliefs.
Read the federal civil rights complaint in Church of Compassion v. Johnson here, the memorandum of points and authorities in support of Plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary injunction here, and the settlement agreement here.
The National Center for Law & Policy is a non-profit 501(c)(3) legal defense organization dedicated to the protection and promotion of religious freedom, the affirmation of life, parental rights and other civil liberties. Please visit our website at www.nclplaw.org. For further inquiries, comments, or to schedule interviews, please contact Dean Broyles at The National Center for Law & Policy at 760-747-4529 or dbroyles@nclplaw.org.