McLean Bible Church Lawsuit Revived by Appeals Court

The McLean Bible Church lawsuit is back on track. On May 19, 2026, the Virginia Court of Appeals revived Gaskins v. McLean Bible Church, reversing a Fairfax County Circuit Court dismissal and sending the case back for further proceedings.¹ Five longtime members are suing the megachurch and its leadership over a disputed 2021 elder election and what they describe as a broader effort by Pastor David Platt and the board of elders to violate the church’s own constitution.²

Who Sued and What They Allege

The plaintiffs are Steve Gaskins, Michael Manfredi, Roland Smith, Deborah Ash, and Kevin Elwell. They filed suit in Fairfax County Circuit Court on July 15, 2021, represented by attorney Rick Boyer.²³ The complaint is styled as a breach of contract action, treating the church’s constitution as an enforceable agreement between MBC and its members.

The trigger was the vote on three new elders — Chuck Hollingsworth, Jim Burris, and Ken Tucker — at a June 30, 2021 congregational meeting. All three failed to reach the 75 percent supermajority the church’s constitution requires, the first time an elder slate had ever been rejected in the church’s history.⁴ The board re-nominated the same three candidates and held a second vote on July 18, 2021 under modified procedures: photo ID was required, ballots carried voters’ names rather than being secret, and members on an “inactive” list received only provisional ballots. Under those conditions, all three candidates cleared roughly 80 percent support.⁵

The lawsuit alleges three main constitutional violations:

Members in good standing were reclassified as “inactive” and stripped of voting rights under a rule that members losing eight consecutive weeks of worship attendance may lose active status. The plaintiffs say the rule was applied inconsistently, especially since MBC had suspended in-person worship during the COVID-19 pandemic and had not tracked individual attendance for years.⁶
Labeling ballots with members’ names in the July 18 election violated the constitutional guarantee of a free and uncoerced vote and exposed dissenters to retaliation.⁵
Platt and the elders sought to purge members who disagreed with the church’s direction in order to secure favorable election results.²

Boyer summarized the plaintiffs’ position: “The heart of the complaint really comes down to truth, transparency, and a free, open, and uncoerced process.”⁵

A related suit filed by six other people connected to the plaintiffs alleged that MBC had effectively become a Southern Baptist church in violation of a constitutional ban on denominational affiliation. That case was voluntarily dismissed (“nonsuited” under Virginia law) after discovery. MBC said the discovery turned up “no improper financial transactions,” while acknowledging that the flows of money among MBC, the SBC, and the affiliated New City Network were “sometimes confusing.”⁷

The Denominational Backdrop

MBC’s constitution states that the church “shall not, and cannot, be affiliated with any denomination.”⁸⁴⁹

In August 2017, coinciding with Platt’s arrival as teaching pastor, MBC signed a partnership agreement with the SBC of Virginia. In March 2021, Ashley Clayton, the SBC Executive Committee’s director of church affiliation, confirmed in an email that MBC was affiliated at the national, state, and local association levels, then retracted the statement at MBC leadership’s request. Critics allege that between 2017 and 2021 MBC contributed more than $2 million to SBC-related initiatives, including at least $375,000 through the SBC’s Cooperative Program, without a congregational vote.⁹ A representative of the SBC Executive Committee and NAMB later acknowledged that the choice to describe the relationship as a “partnership” had been “poor.”¹⁰ In December 2021, MBC’s elders voted to end the SBC partnership; by March 2022 the church was removed from the SBC directory.

How the Case Got Dismissed

The elder-election lawsuit has been through several rounds. In June 2022, the Fairfax County Circuit Court dismissed the original complaint after MBC held a new elder election that incorporated some of the plaintiffs’ requested remedies. The Virginia Court of Appeals affirmed that dismissal in part but let the plaintiffs continue pursuing certain new claims.⁷

On remand, the case stalled over discovery. The plaintiffs sought church membership rolls, records identifying members reclassified as inactive, and board meeting minutes. MBC resisted, arguing that disclosure would violate the church’s First Amendment rights to freedom of association and religion. The circuit court agreed and blocked discovery entirely. In December 2024, Judge David Bernhard dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice in a one-page order, ruling that the election dispute was moot because the contested elders had resigned and later won reelection.²

In 2023, while the case was pending, MBC amended its constitution to eliminate the “vote of confidence” procedure and give the board of elders greater control over the election of new elders. According to the appellate court, the members who were allegedly disenfranchised received no notice of the amendment vote and no opportunity to participate.¹

What the May 2026 Appeals Ruling Changed

A three-judge panel — Judges Friedman, Chaney, and Duffan — reversed Judge Bernhard’s dismissal on two grounds.¹

First, the case is not moot. The plaintiffs’ claims about ongoing disenfranchisement, lack of notice and transparency, and elimination of the secret ballot were not limited to the 2021 elections and remain live controversies.²

Second, the circuit court committed legal error by treating the First Amendment as an absolute bar to discovery. Writing for the panel, Judge Frank Friedman held that associational and religious protections, though weighty, must be balanced against the plaintiffs’ right to obtain evidence in a civil dispute. On associational privilege, the court adopted a burden-shifting framework drawn from Grandbouche v. Clancy: MBC must first make a preliminary showing that disclosing its records would chill members’ associational rights; if it does, the plaintiffs must show a “compelling need” for the information; the court then balances the two.¹

The panel also addressed the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine, which generally bars civil courts from resolving disputes rooted in religious faith or doctrine. Judge Friedman drew a distinction: deciding whether a member who did not miss eight consecutive weeks of worship was improperly classified as inactive is a contract question about the church’s own bylaws, not a religious one. “If a member who has not missed eight consecutive weeks is declared inactive, the Board has violated the MBC constitution,” the opinion stated.⁶ The court acknowledged that deciding what counts as a “reasonable excuse” for missing worship might be a religious question, but said the case had not yet reached that point. “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,” Friedman wrote.¹¹

The Church’s Position

MBC leadership has consistently said every legal claim brought against the church is “meritless” and that the litigation is the work of a small dissident group trying to remove Platt. In a report released in early 2025, Executive Pastor Wade Burnett identified Jeremiah and Laura Burke as the “self-proclaimed” leaders of an opposition group organized as “Save McLean Bible Church,” and said the group had filed “nearly a dozen lawsuits and appeals” over four years.¹² The Burkes were the only two members formally removed through church discipline, in November 2021, and were issued a trespass notice barring them from church property.¹³

Leadership has pointed to membership votes supporting Platt’s direction by margins of 75 to 95 percent and to membership growth of more than 1,400 people since 2020.¹² On the financial allegations, the church said all SBC-related transactions “have cleared independent audit” and that annual external audits revealed no improper transactions.⁷

Where the Case Goes From Here

The case has been remanded to the Fairfax County Circuit Court with instructions to apply the burden-shifting framework the appellate panel laid out. No trial date has been set, and there is no public indication of settlement talks.¹ The near-term question is whether MBC can show that producing its membership records and board minutes would genuinely chill members’ associational rights. If it cannot, the court will move to what the panel called “appropriately limited discovery” and decide whether ecclesiastical abstention bars the claims or whether the dispute can be resolved under “neutral principles of law” — reading the church’s constitution as a contract.⁶

1
FindLaw. Gaskins v. McLean Bible Church
2
Christian Post. McLean Bible Church Lawsuit Revived by Virginia Appeals Court
3
ChurchLeaders. David Platt and McLean Bible Church Elders Sued After Recent Elder Vote Exposes Major Problems
4
Christianity Today. David Platt McLean Bible Church Elder Race Politics Critics
5
Word and Way. David Platt’s Dreams for McLean Bible Church Sour as Members File Lawsuit Over Elder Vote
6
AL.com. Judge Sends Dispute Involving Former Alabama Megachurch Pastor Back to Court
7
McLean Bible Church. Legal Update
8
McLean Bible Church. History
9
Center for Baptist Leadership. Autonomous No More: How SBC Insiders Hijacked McLean Bible, Raided Its Finances, and Split the Church
10
Baptist News Global. Understanding the David Platt Story
11
MinistryWatch. McLean Bible Church Lawsuit Lives On
12
MinistryWatch. McLean Bible Church Details Plot to Oust David Platt, Others
13
McLean Bible Church. MBC Lawsuit Report