An Iowa church is celebrating a judge’s dismissal of a petition to annul its tax-exempt status. The ruling is based largely on Iowa’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) passed in April 2024. 

Calvary Chapel Iowa owns two properties in Cedar Rapids, including the worship campus and a newly built home where the pastor, his wife and their three children live. A portion of its campus is used as a Christian school and daycare. 

In October 2023, the church’s pastor spoke out against so-called drag queen story times at public libraries and schools. Responding to LGBTQ ideology targeting children, the pastor organized a book reading of “Jesus and My Gender,” a children’s book that states humans are made in the image of God while affirming the Biblical definition of male and female. On his social media, the pastor endorsed school board candidates he believed would defend children. He did not endorse Katie Lowe Lancaster, whom Dustin Brooks, a member of a local diversity and equity committee, was a committee chairman for. 

In retaliation, Brooks and a group of Iowa taxpayers submitted a petition to the director of the Iowa Department of Revenue on Nov. 29, 2023. The petition argued the tax exemption should be annulled because the school and house were not “used solely for the appropriate objects of the religious institution.”

Liberty Counsel partnered with Kirkwood Institute to represent the church. 

The church believes the petition attacks the free exercise of religion. 

“The private prosecutors of this action have provided both direct and circumstantial evidence that their purpose for this action is because they disagree with [the pastor’s]viewpoints in the exercise of cherished First Amendment speech and religious free exercise rights,” the church stated in its brief, which redacted the pastor’s name. “Government officials (as well as deputized private prosecutors) are not permitted to weaponize the machinery of government to punish speech.”

Administrative Law Judge Jonathan Gallagher gave the final verdict to reject the taxpayers’ petition, which was the first legal ruling resulting from Iowa’s RFRA.

In the document granting motion to dismiss, Gallagher stated, “To hold otherwise would be to allow the unaccountable political opponents of a church the option to use the power of the State to target and/or retaliate against the religious organization for the organization’s activities, thereby creating a chilling effect not only on that specific religious group but also all other similarly oriented religious organizations. This is precisely the type of religious interference that RFRA was designed to prevent, and until the judiciary provides different guidance on the scope of RFRA, this case must be dismissed.”

Photo: Adobe Stock