Texas court declines to pick sides in megachurch dispute

After a yearslong legal dispute with current and former members, a nearly 100-year-old Texas church with 94,000 congregants received a win in court last Wednesday.

A business court cited the constitutional doctrine of church autonomy when dismissing nearly every claim that the current and former congregants filed against Second Baptist Church in Houston. The members contended that the church deceptively took away members’ voting rights, allowing the senior pastor’s son to succeed his father without a vote. But the court declined to weigh in on the conflict, saying it fell under the church’s First Amendment protections.

“Disagreements over leadership in so large an organization may be inevitable, even among communities of like-minded believers,” Judge Grant Dorfman wrote. “And any court would naturally feel reluctance to pick sides in such a dispute. Fortunately, that is not this court’s role.”

Jeremiah Counsel Corp., a nonprofit founded by the group of congregants, sued Second Baptist last year. The nonprofit contends that Second Baptist fraudulently altered its governing documents to strip members of their voting rights in 2023. Church leadership reportedly told members the bylaw updates aimed to defend the church against “the woke agenda,” according to the lawsuit.

Members received scant notice of the meeting to vote on the bylaws, leading to a sparsely attended meeting, the lawsuit contended. There, 317 church members from the church’s six campuses voted 315-2 to approve changes to the church’s articles of incorporation and bylaws. That represents less than 1% of the church members, Jeremiah Counsel said.

The new 2023 bylaws designated a ministry leadership team, composed of the senior pastor and a group he selects, as the sole controllers of the church’s assets, budget, and pastoral succession.

The board of trustees and the church members did not realize the new articles of incorporation or bylaws included language to alter the voting rights, Doug Bech, a former trustee and lawyer, told me. Members’ voting rights had been in place since the church’s founding in 1928, he added.

“You had a pastor that you believed in and trusted,” said Bech, a Jeremiah Counsel member who said he knew former pastor Ed Young for more than 30 years. “If he had said he wanted to amend the bylaws to defend against the woke agenda, that sounded OK, and we had no reason to think that there was anything else in there that should bother us.”

Jeremiah Counsel called the vote a scheme to force Second Baptist into a “megachurch” model of tight “dictatorial” governance over the church’s $1 billion in assets, according to a later court filing.

The following year, Young appointed his son, Ben Young, to replace him as senior pastor without “any need to be anxious about whether his son would be selected” through the traditional vote process, the lawsuit said. Soon after, Ben had his father pack up his office and barred the senior Young from any further involvement with the church. Ed Young had led the church since 1978 and grew it from 500 members, Bech said.

Ben Young then nominated friends and family members to the ministry leadership team, the lawsuit said.

Ben Young has denied Jeremiah Counsel’s allegations of fraud and deception. In a 2025 sermon, he said the new bylaws were worked through “biblically and legally.”

“The members who were trustees at that time unanimously approved and recommended them to the church. These bylaws were voted on by the church to a virtual unanimous decision,” he said at the time. “Second is a unique multi-campus church and school that could not function without healthy, clear, and strong bylaws.”

In last week’s ruling, Judge Dorfman said that while he could evaluate whether Second Baptist had followed state requirements for changing its articles of incorporation, he couldn’t determine whether these actions were just, nor did he have a right to weigh in on the bylaws.

State law provides more regulation around the church’s articles of incorporation, which the ministry submits to Texas. But the court can’t evaluate the bylaws, which govern internal affairs.

Dorfman said Second Baptist changed its articles of incorporation without giving members proper notice. But members’ voting rights were enshrined in the bylaws, not the articles. This means the new bylaws remain in place, he said. Dorfman dismissed all claims against the church, including Jeremiah Counsel’s arguments that Second Baptist engaged in fraud and failed its fiduciary duties. The First Amendment doctrine of church autonomy prevents him from ruling on this as it bars the government from interfering in internal church disputes, he said.

At the time of the 2023 vote to approve the new bylaws, Second Baptist said it was protecting its ability to operate as a “biblical church,” Dorfman explained. But the judge said he can’t analyze the new bylaws without trying to determine what “biblical church” means. Dorfman also allowed Ben Young’s appointment to stand.

The judge acknowledged his opinion would likely cause “disappointment and frustration,” especially regarding the fraud claims. “That was not the court’s intention,” Dorfman wrote. “But is a perhaps inevitable result of the church autonomy doctrine and the centrality to our country, our [U.S. and Texas] Constitutions, and to our people of the principle of religious freedom that it protects.”

Lael Weinberger, a constitutional law expert at George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School, said that although the case presented a difficult issue, the court’s ruling was sensible. “It should be a reminder that one can’t be too careful about what goes into these basic organizational documents, like the articles of incorporation,” he told me via email.

The case should be a matter for a jury and not dismissed under church autonomy, argued Bech, the former church trustee. He contended that, under Texas law, nonprofits must inform members of any changes to their voting rights. A jury should weigh whether members were reasonably aware that their voting rights were altered at the 2023 meeting.

Jeremiah Counsel plans to appeal the decision and hopefully return voting rights back to members, Bech said.

Second Baptist lauded the court’s ruling, with Ben Young stating he was grateful to the court for its decision. The ruling was “well-reasoned,” said Jay Sekulow, the chief counsel at American Center for Law and Justice, which represents the church. (The high-profile lawyer also represented President Donald Trump in his first impeachment trial.)

“As Judge Dorfman recognized, the church autonomy doctrine prevents civil courts from becoming involved in matters that are at the heart of a church’s internal governance,” Sekulow said. “We couldn’t agree more.”

Courts can evaluate whether churches have followed the law in setting up and submitting documents like articles of incorporation, but they can’t intervene in how a church governs itself, said Brad Jacob, an associate dean at Regent University School of Law.

“The church autonomy doctrine goes back to the idea that a court can’t tell a church whether you’re doing your religious stuff right or wrong,” Jacob said. “And this court is not doing that. This court is not jumping in to tell the church how to solve its internal matters.”