A judge in Williams County, Ohio, has dismissed with prejudice a lawsuit city officials brought against a small church that shelters homeless people, ruling that the city of Bryan treated the congregation worse than it treated local hotels and that such discrimination fails constitutional scrutiny.

Judge James D. Bates of the Court of Common Pleas of Williams County issued the final order, ending one front of a three-year legal campaign the city waged against Pastor Chris Avell and Dad's Place Church. The ruling also bars Bryan's fire chief from closing the church site, CBN News reported.

The decision strips the city of its primary weapon against a ministry whose only offense, by all available evidence, was keeping its doors open around the clock so people without homes could come in from the cold.

How Bryan targeted Dad's Place

The trouble started when city officials moved to close the church on alleged zoning violations. The Bryan City Zoning Commission argued that because Dad's Place Church lacked bedrooms, it could not house homeless people. That reasoning gave bureaucrats a pretext to treat a church operating a short-term shelter as though it were an unlicensed boarding house, while ignoring the accommodations granted to secular businesses in the same city.

Judge Bates saw through the distinction. His order noted that Bryan had granted waivers to hotels but refused the same accommodation to the church.

"The City has given waivers to other businesses like hotels, but has refused to give the church a similar accommodation. This is fatal under strict scrutiny. Therefore, a judgment in favor of Dad's Place must be entered."

That finding matters. Strict scrutiny is the highest standard a court applies when evaluating whether the government has violated a fundamental right. When a city cannot clear that bar, it means its justification was not merely weak, it was constitutionally insufficient.

The pattern of selective enforcement is not unique to Bryan. Across the country, churches have clashed with local governments over zoning rules, parking codes, and building requirements that seem to tighten only when the building in question has a cross on it.

A fine, a suspended jail sentence, and a criminal record

The civil lawsuit was only one piece of the city's effort. In 2025, Bryan Municipal Court fined Pastor Avell and handed him a 60-day suspended jail sentence, for the act of keeping Dad's Place Church open 24/7 so homeless people could escape bitter winter cold.

Read that again. A pastor in Ohio received a criminal conviction and the threat of jail time because he refused to lock his church doors on people who had nowhere else to go.

That criminal case is not yet resolved. An appeal remains pending before the Ohio Sixth District Court of Appeals. So while the civil lawsuit is finished, Pastor Avell still carries a conviction on his record for sheltering the vulnerable.

First Liberty Senior Counsel Jeremy Dys, whose firm represented the church alongside Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, and Spengler Nathanson PLL, did not mince words about the city's conduct.

"It's past time for the city to end its mean-spirited, three-year campaign of harassment of this church."

Dys also framed the stakes plainly. "All Pastor Chris ever wanted to do was keep the doors of his church open to those in desperate need of temporary shelter," he said.

What the ruling means for religious liberty

The dismissal with prejudice is significant. It means the city cannot refile the same claims. The lawsuit is dead, and the legal theory behind it, that a church without bedrooms has no right to shelter people overnight, died with it.

Philip Williamson of Taft, one of the attorneys representing Dad's Place, pointed to the constitutional principles at the heart of the case.

"The Ohio and federal Constitutions alike protect vital ministries like Dad's Place, and we are grateful to the court for recognizing that the church is entitled to the protections."

Williamson added: "We are hopeful that Dad's Place can now serve the community in peace."

The ruling fits a broader pattern of courts reaffirming that religious organizations retain constitutional protections even when their missions collide with local bureaucratic preferences. A federal court recently ruled that a religious nonprofit may limit hiring to faith-aligned employees, reinforcing the principle that the government cannot force religious groups to abandon their identity to participate in public life.

Similarly, a federal appeals court sided with a pro-life pregnancy network on mission-based hiring, another signal that the judiciary is pushing back when government overreach targets faith-driven organizations.

The city's logic, examined

Bryan's zoning commission argued that a building without bedrooms cannot house people. On its face, the rule sounds neutral. In practice, it targeted one church doing one thing the city did not like.

Hotels in Bryan received waivers. Dad's Place did not. The city never explained, at least not in any reasoning that survived judicial review, why a hotel guest deserved a regulatory pass but a homeless person sleeping on a church pew did not.

That is the core of the strict-scrutiny failure. When government draws lines that burden religious exercise, it must show the line serves a compelling interest and is the least restrictive means available. Granting waivers to hotels while denying them to a church makes the opposite case. It shows the city had flexibility, and chose not to use it for a house of worship.

Local governments that pick fights with churches over zoning often claim they are simply enforcing the rules. But enforcement that bends for some and breaks others is not neutral. It is selective. And when the target is a religious ministry, the Constitution has something to say about it.

Cases like the one involving Holy Trinity Church's lawsuit against a Pennsylvania township over a denied bell tower illustrate how common these local disputes have become, and how often churches find themselves on the wrong end of rules that seem to apply only to them.

Pastor Avell's response

Pastor Avell greeted the ruling with gratitude, not grievance. "We praise God for this decision and the work it allows this church to continue," he said.

He also noted the timing. The decision arrived during Holy Week.

"I consider it no coincidence that this decision comes during Holy Week as our church joins Christians worldwide to celebrate Christ's victory over death."

For three years, the city of Bryan treated a pastor who sheltered the homeless like a lawbreaker. It fined him. It threatened him with jail. It dragged him through multiple legal proceedings. And through it all, Dad's Place Church stayed open.

What remains unresolved

The civil fight is over. But the criminal appeal before the Ohio Sixth District Court of Appeals is not. Pastor Avell still faces the consequences of a conviction that stemmed from the same conduct the common pleas court just ruled the city had no right to punish through civil litigation.

Whether the appellate court reaches a similar conclusion on the criminal side remains to be seen. The amount of the fine imposed in 2025 and the specific charge underlying the conviction have not been publicly detailed in available reporting.

The broader question is whether the city of Bryan will finally stand down, or whether it will find another code, another inspector, another complaint to file. Three years of litigation suggest a bureaucracy that does not give up easily, even when the courts tell it to stop.

The ongoing national debate over religious liberty makes cases like this one more than local disputes. They test whether the First Amendment still means what it says when a small-town government decides a church is inconvenient.

A pastor opened his doors to people who had nowhere to sleep. The city spent three years trying to make him a criminal for it. The court said no. That should not have been a hard call.