Liberty Counsel filed an emergency motion to Florida’s Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal requesting an immediate stay and reversal of a temporary injunction that prohibits Coastal Family Church in Flagler Beach from holding in-person worship services.
The church was closed for worship services Sunday, January 25 after the Seventh Judicial Circuit Court issued an injunction prohibiting the congregation from gathering on the church’s own property amid a legal dispute. Church leaders stood outside the building beginning at 9 a.m. notifying arriving congregants that they could not hold worship services due to the court order. Forced to choose between worshiping God and being held in contempt, or cancelling services, the elders chose to respect the court and turned away congregants even though it was an unconstitutional blow to their First Amendment religious freedoms.
During Sunday’s normal worship time, a representative from the association’s property management firm arrived with three police vehicles to enforce the injunction.
Founding Pastor Roderick Palmer conveyed to the police that the church was following the order and invited the officers to tour the church’s interior to verify no religious activity was taking place on the property. After about 45 minutes, the property management representative and the officers left reportedly satisfied that the church was adhering to the order. However, while the officers made no official statements, church leaders indicated that the officers appeared uncomfortable enforcing an injunction that had shut down a church.
The church, located in the Flagler Square strip mall, is facing a lawsuit from its property association Flagler Square – JAX, Inc. over alleged parking congestion and a condominium covenant that the association interprets as prohibiting “public assembly.”
On Sunday, church elders provided a copy of the court order to its congregants in which Judge Sandra Upchurch sided with the association barring the church’s “public assembly” without explicitly defining the term. For now, the church is not allowed to collectively worship the Lord, teach Scripture, take communion, or participate in fellowship as a congregation on the property.
Pastor Palmer addressed the congregation in a video announcement encouraging them to “pivot” from their normal Sunday gathering and to be the church out in the “highways and byways.”
“These walls don’t define us. Our gathering on Sunday doesn’t define who we are, but we are a family that would connect whether we’re in this building or we’re outside,” said Pastor Palmer.
On January 26, Liberty Counsel filed a motion to the Seventh Judicial Circuit Court seeking a temporary stay on the injunction while the case is appealed to Florida’s Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal. The motion states the injunction is an unconstitutional restriction on the First Amendment rights of speech, assembly, and religious exercise, and violates Florida law by preventing the church from using its own property to gather and worship. The church has already suffered irreparable harm from having been forcibly closed for one Sunday service, noted Liberty Counsel.
In August 2025, Flagler Square – JAX, Inc. sought to enforce a restrictive covenant prohibiting “public assembly” at the properties in the Flagler Square strip mall. The church argues that the covenant is ambiguous, selectively enforced, and unlawful under both state and federal law. The association claims the church’s services “would overwhelm available parking at all times” despite Sunday services leaving more than 160 parking spots available. Notably, the condominium declaration also prohibits strip mall units from being used as discount stores, banquet halls, bingo parlors, or other places of public assembly. However, Flagler Square is home to a consignment store, and a Fraternal Order of Police lodge that regularly hosts bingo nights and rents their facility to the public for public assembly.
Despite no evidence of parking problems, and after the city formally approved the church’s zoning special exception, the trial court still issued an order preventing religious gatherings on the property.
The court order to bar a church from using its own property for worship constitutes “a prior restraint” on speech, assembly, and religious exercise, which is “the most serious and least tolerable form of infringement on First Amendment rights,” noted Liberty Counsel.
Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “Coastal Family Church has been unconstitutionally forced to choose between cancelling worship services or be in contempt of court. This is what happened during the COVID-19 pandemic when churches were shut down. This is unconstitutional. Every Sunday that the doors of Coastal Family Church remain closed inflicts irreparable spiritual and constitutional injury on its congregation. The U.S. Constitution and Florida laws are clear that Pastor Roderick Palmer and Coastal Family Church have the right to hold church services on church property and that restrictive covenants cannot ban religious assembly. This injunction must be stayed and reversed.”
(SOURCE: Liberty Counsel via Christian Newswire)