A Kentucky church is asking the Supreme Court to decide if the state government must pay its legal expenses from a challenge to COVID-19-era restrictions on church attendance.
The church is arguing that its constitutional rights were violated when it was denied attorney’s fees in its lawsuit, after the same court awarded those fees to litigants in another lawsuit based on the same facts.
The petitioner, Maryville Baptist Church, is located in Louisville, Kentucky. The respondent, Andy Beshear, a Democrat, has been governor of Kentucky since 2019.
Beshear declared a state of emergency in March 2020 based on the pandemic. He issued an executive order banning mass gatherings in public, including those for faith-based activities. The governor lifted all remaining pandemic-related restrictions in June 2021, according to the petition.
The church argues that its due process rights were violated because the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit made different orders regarding fees in the two lawsuits that achieved the same results.
The church and three of its congregants filed two separate lawsuits in federal court, and both sets of plaintiffs won separate preliminary injunctions blocking the mass gathering ban. The congregants’ lawsuit was called Roberts v. Neace, the petition said.
When the governor later dropped the policy while he was being sued, the lawsuits, which had resulted in injunctions but had not yet reached the trial stage, were dismissed as moot. This meant the courts ceased to have authority over the cases because the original dispute had been resolved.
Both of the cases “involve the same facts, same law, same injunctions, same judicial panel, but different results,” the petition said.
When a litigant wins a federal civil rights lawsuit against the government, a court is allowed to award attorney’s fees to that litigant, who is known as a prevailing party. The reasoning behind such awards is that they deter future rights violations by the government and safeguard individual rights by encouraging possibly worthwhile lawsuits by those who may not be able to afford legal counsel.
The Sixth Circuit held in the church lawsuit that the church could not be a prevailing party because the Supreme Court issued a ruling in February 2025 changing the definition of what a prevailing party was, the petition said.
In that case, motorists had sued Virginia over a state law requiring an automatic suspension—without notice or a hearing—of driver’s licenses for people who fail to pay court fines or fees. The motorists won a preliminary injunction blocking the law, but afterwards, the Virginia General Assembly repealed the law.
In the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the motorists had not achieved prevailing party status “because preliminary injunctions do not conclusively resolve the rights of parties on the merits.”
A plaintiff who obtains a preliminary injunction “has achieved only temporary success at an intermediary ‘stage of the suit’” before the case is finally decided. The fact that an external event, such as the repeal of a law, ends the litigation does not make the plaintiff a prevailing party, Roberts said.
The Sixth Circuit ruled in the church case that “consistent with” Lackey v. Stinnie, an award of attorney’s fees to the church had to be denied.
The petition said two different orders on attorney’s fees came “even though the same rights vested in both cases arising out of the same litigation.”
In legal parlance, a vested right is one that is absolute and cannot be taken away.
“This result cannot be squared with” constitutional due process rights, the petition said.
The petition said the Sixth Circuit’s decision in the church case conflicts with precedents of the Supreme Court and of state and federal courts. Those courts have held that “entitlement to fees is determined by the law in force at the termination of the action, and the right to fees and costs vest[s] at the termination of the action based on then-existing law.”
“As this Court declared over 100 years ago, ‘the private right of parties which have been vested by the judgment of a court cannot be taken away,’” the petition said, citing the Supreme Court’s 1923 ruling in Hodges v. Snyder.
The Supreme Court should take up this case “to clarify that a judicial decision which changes legal precedent cannot be applied retroactively to divest a private party of vested rights,” the petition said.
Liberty Counsel chairman Mat Staver told The Epoch Times that “the implications of this case go far beyond the specific facts.” Liberty Counsel, a public interest law firm, is representing the church.
“Everyone is entitled to due process of law. Rights once vested cannot retroactively be eliminated,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has directed Beshear to respond to the petition by Aug. 25.
The Epoch Times reached out for comment to Beshear’s office. No reply was received by publication time.
