Virginia court overturns dismissal of lawsuit against David Platt’s McLean Bible Church

By Leonardo Blair, Senior Reporter Wednesday, May 20, 2026

An ongoing legal battle between Pastor David Platt’s multi-campus McLean Bible Church in Virginia and disgruntled longtime members over the 2021 election of new elders amid allegations of leftward drift was given new life on Tuesday by the Court of Appeals of Virginia.

The court overturned a lower court’s dismissal for the second time in three years. Appellate judges ruled that the circuit court erred when it fully blocked a broad discovery motion from the plaintiffs seeking church voting lists and member data. The lower court had concluded that the First Amendment’s religion clauses completely barred such discovery.

“We recognize that the circuit court had little precedential guidance in deciding these weighty questions. Nevertheless, for all the reasons stated …, we find error in the circuit court’s holding that the First Amendment’s religion clauses flatly barred it from compelling any discovery,” Virginia Court of Appeals Judge Frank K. Friedman wrote in a 21-page opinion published Tuesday.

“We therefore reverse the court’s judgment. If, on remand, the court finds that the associational privilege does not apply, it should proceed with appropriately limited discovery to determine whether the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine applies.”

McLean Bible Church did not immediately respond on Wednesday to a request for comment from The Christian Post.

Five longtime McLean Bible Church members (Steve Gaskins, Michael Manfredi, Roland Smith, Deborah Ash and Kevin Elwell) alleged in their complaint that church leaders denied members the opportunity to cast secret ballots in an elder election held July 18, 2021. The lawsuit claims the election violated the church’s constitution.

In the summer of 2021, McLean Bible Church announced that three new elders (Chuck Hollingsworth, Ken Tucker and Jim Burris) had been affirmed by more than 80% of the congregation in a congregational vote, following a previous June 30, 2021, election that was marred by alleged irregularities.

In a message to the congregation on July 4, 2021, Platt alleged that activists inside and outside the church coordinated a campaign to vote down the proposed elders and seize control of the church.

The plaintiffs allege that Platt and the elders sought to purge conservatives from the nondenominational church to secure the elder election. According to the complaint, the church board attempted to disqualify members from voting by “attempting to purge members by designating them ‘inactive’ on an arbitrary basis, with no record that the members had missed eight consecutive Sundays, and without investigation into whether the members had ‘reasonable excuse,’ such as missing services for fear of the coronavirus, or even from the Church’s own cancellation of in-person services due to the coronavirus.”

The church said it attempted to resolve the dispute and invited the plaintiffs to pursue “Christian mediation and reconciliation.” According to the church, the plaintiffs did not respond to the invitation, prompting McLean Bible Church to adopt a “formal Plan for Lawsuit Resolution.”

Approved by a substantial majority of the congregation, the plan included the resignation and revote of the three elders.

In 2022, a lower court dismissed the complaint filed by the dissenting members, but the appeals court reversed that decision in June 2023. In December 2024, the Fairfax County Circuit Court dismissed the lawsuit for a second time. Judge David Bernhard ruled that the election dispute was moot because the contested elders had resigned and later won reelection. The court entered a one-page order dismissing the case with prejudice.

The appeals court, however, rejected the decision to dismiss the case in its entirety.

“We disagreed … with the circuit court’s ruling — and MBC’s contention — that the entire case was moot … . After all, some of the dissenters’ claims alleged ongoing violations of the MBC constitution. Thus, we remanded the case ‘to permit the circuit court to address ongoing claims relating to disenfranchisement of members, transparency and notice, and the secret ballot dispute,’” Friedman wrote.

“We took care, though, not to express any opinion about the merits of the dissenters’ remaining claims, holding only that they were not moot because they were not specifically tied to the 2021 elections.”