Abyssinian Baptist Church Lawsuits: Election Ruling and Bias Suit

Two lawsuits tied to Abyssinian Baptist Church’s selection of the Rev. Kevin R. Johnson as its 21st senior pastor have both been dismissed at the trial-court level. A state-court petition seeking to nullify the June 2024 election was thrown out by a New York Supreme Court judge in December 2025 after the court found no fraud or bylaw violation, and a federal gender-discrimination suit brought by a rejected female candidate was dismissed months earlier on First Amendment grounds. Johnson remains the historic Harlem congregation’s senior pastor.¹

The Election Challenge in State Court

In October 2024, four current and former members filed suit in the New York Supreme Court, Civil Branch, asking a judge to void Johnson’s election and order a new search. The plaintiffs were Dr. Kevin McGruder, a history professor and longtime member; Jasmine McFarlane-White; Clarence E. Ball III; and the Rev. C. Vernon Mason Sr., a former member of the search committee who said he had been expelled from the committee during the process.²³ A support group called “Restoring Integrity at Abyssinian Baptist Church” raised more than $133,000 on GoFundMe toward a $200,000 goal to pay for the litigation.⁴

The petition raised four main claims:

The election failed because fewer than half of all eligible members voted, and the bylaws required a majority of the full membership.
The search committee was dominated by deacons and trustees and had been structured to favor Johnson.
Members were never given the chance to vote on the new pastor’s salary and benefits.
Johnson’s annual compensation should be publicly disclosed.

Mason said in a statement that “the process that I witnessed unfold effectively pushed aside other highly qualified candidates.”³

The church moved to dismiss. Its attorney, Brian Pete, called the suit “nothing more than a scheme developed by Petitioners to remove the duly-elected pastor” and said, “Elections are decided by those who choose to vote. Petitioners don’t like that, so here we are.”⁵ Johnson called the claims “baseless” and told reporters, “It really just boils down to not accepting the results of the election.”²

How Justice Clynes Ruled

On December 19, 2025, New York Supreme Court Justice James G. Clynes dismissed the petition in its entirety. The case is McGruder v. Abyssinian Baptist Church, Index No. 159800/2024.⁶

The court kept jurisdiction over the dispute. Deciding who is qualified to be a pastor is an ecclesiastical question courts cannot touch, the judge wrote, but whether a church followed its own bylaws can be resolved using neutral legal principles.⁶

On the central question, the judge sided with the church. The bylaws require election by “the majority vote of the members in good standing who are eligible to vote.” The plaintiffs read that as requiring a majority of the entire membership roll. The court called that reading “unreasonable” and held that the phrase means a majority of those who actually cast ballots.⁶

The rest of the claims fell along with that one. Electronic voting was permitted because the congregation had previously approved an alternative to in-person balloting, and the “presence” requirement for a quorum did not demand physical attendance where reasonable electronic measures were used. The expansion of the search committee from 17 to 27 members had been approved by the congregation at its 2023 annual meeting. Johnson’s compensation package had been approved at the February 4, 2024, annual corporate meeting and folded into the annual budget. And on the fraud claim, the court said the plaintiffs offered only “conjecture, assumptions and speculations.”⁶

The petition was dismissed for failure to state a cause of action. Neither side was awarded damages or costs.⁶

The Federal Gender-Discrimination Suit

A separate federal lawsuit had already gone through the courts by the time the state case was decided. In December 2023, the Rev. Dr. Eboni Marshall Turman — an associate professor at Yale Divinity School and a former assistant minister at Abyssinian — sued the church and search committee chair Valerie S. Grant in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging gender discrimination in the pastoral search. The case was captioned Marshall Turman v. The Abyssinian Baptist Church, Case No. 1:23-cv-11304.⁷

Marshall Turman was the sole woman among the finalists but was not advanced to the final group of five, all of whom were men.⁸ Her complaint alleged that certain committee members had said Abyssinian would hire a woman as senior pastor “over my dead body.”⁹ She also pointed to the church’s job posting, which promised not to discriminate on the basis of gender, and argued that pledge meant the church could not shelter behind the First Amendment’s ministerial exception.¹⁰

Grant said the committee used a common set of questions for all candidates but asked Marshall Turman some additional questions because “she was the only woman” candidate.¹¹ The church denied the discrimination allegations, saying Marshall Turman “ultimately fell short of some key requirements for the role.”⁸

On March 31, 2025, U.S. District Judge Dale E. Ho dismissed the case in its entirety. He held that the ministerial exception, a First Amendment doctrine that bars courts from interfering with the employment relationship between a religious institution and its ministers, applied to the selection of a senior pastor. Resolving Marshall Turman’s claim, he wrote, would require the court to become “entangled with Abyssinian’s ecclesiastical innerworkings.” Judge Ho called the church’s nondiscrimination statement “boilerplate” that did not waive its constitutional protections. The claim against Grant individually was dismissed on the same grounds.¹⁰

The court did not reach the merits of whether gender bias actually occurred.¹² Marshall Turman filed a notice of appeal on April 30, 2025, but a U.S. Court of Appeals mandate was received on June 25, 2025, and court records show the case as closed.⁷

The Vote That Set Off the Fight

The math of the June 2024 election is what turned an internal dispute into litigation. The congregation voted over two days: online on June 21 and in person on June 23. Of 2,738 members in good standing, 1,208 cast ballots. Johnson received 672 yes votes and 535 no votes, winning about 55.6% of those who participated but only about 24.5% of the total eligible membership.⁶ He was installed as the 21st senior pastor on September 29, 2024.¹³

Under the plaintiffs’ reading of the bylaws, Johnson needed at least 1,370 yes votes — a majority of all eligible members — to be validly elected. Under the church’s reading, and now the court’s, he needed a majority of those who cast ballots, which he received.⁵

Where Things Stand

Both lawsuits are closed at the trial-court level, and Marshall Turman’s appeal has ended in a mandate returning the case to the district court without revival. The church has publicly confirmed that no pending appeals or new filings remain in either matter.¹ Rev. Kevin R. Johnson continues to serve as Abyssinian’s 21st senior pastor.

1
Abyssinian Baptist Church. Dismissal of Legal Matters
2
CBS News New York. Harlem Abyssinian Baptist Church New Lawsuit
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NBC New York. Petition Nullify Pastor Election Abyssinian Baptist Church Harlem
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GoFundMe. Lawsuit for Integrity at Abyssinian Baptist Church
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Religion News Service. Disputed Vote for Harlem’s Historic Abyssinian Baptist Church Pastor Is Tested in Court
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FindLaw. McGruder v. Abyssinian Baptist Church
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CourtListener. Marshall Turman v. The Abyssinian Baptist Church
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New York Post. NYC Baptist Church Rejected Calvin Butts Successor Over Gender Suit
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CNN. Abyssinian Baptist Lawsuit Gender Discrimination
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Christian Century. Abyssinian Baptist Church Welcomes Dismissal of Pastor Candidate’s Discrimination Suit
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CBS News New York. Abyssinian Baptist Church Harlem Gender Bias Lawsuit
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Baptist News Global. Spiritual Questions Remain After Abyssinian’s Gender Bias Lawsuit Dismissed
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Christian Post. NY Court Dismisses Lawsuit Seeking to Nullify Election of Pastor