(RNS) — Worship leader and conservative activist Sean Feucht has filed a lawsuit against the city of Spokane, Washington, claiming the city council violated his religious freedom when it passed a resolution last year condemning an event he headlined and referring to him as an “anti-LGBTQ extremist.”
The lawsuit, which was filed on Wednesday (June 5) in Spokane County Superior Court, claims four current and former members of the Spokane City Council violated the Washington State Constitution and U.S. Constitution, including the establishment clause that bars the government from establishing a single religion.
The city’s resolution “was enacted in violation of FEUCHT’s Free Exercise of Religion as established by the First Amendment,” the lawsuit claims, later calling the city’s motion “a direct action that condemned and punished the public worship of FEUCHT.”
City officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday, but Feucht framed the lawsuit in combative terms.
“Liberals have gotten away with using the power of government to bully Christians for too long, and we’re not putting up with it anymore,” Feucht said in a statement sent to Religion News Service. “We’re Americans. This is still a free country. We have the right to gather and worship and pray without being attacked and maligned by our own government, so we are going to fight back.”
The lawsuit is the latest chapter in a controversy over an incident that occurred last August, when then-Spokane Mayor Nadine Woodward drew backlash for attending an event in the city organized by Feucht. The event was part of Feucht’s “Let Us Worship” tour, which kicked off during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and drew criticism for hosting in-person concerts across the country — often in defiance of local pandemic restrictions.
The events were marked by controversy: At one gathering in Portland, Oregon, Feucht’s security included at least one member of the extremist group Proud Boys and a person charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“If you mess with them or our 1st amendment right to worship God – you’ll meet Jesus one way or another,” Feucht once tweeted alongside a picture of his security team.
Feucht has also been an outspoken critic of LGBTQ+ rights campaigns, using the term “groomers” to refer to their supporters and once tweeting “The LGBTQ+ mafia is a cult bent on perverting and destroying the innocence of every child they can.”
Last year’s worship event in Spokane also featured local pastor Matt Shea, the head of On Fire Ministries who has appeared at multiple events associated with Christian nationalism and a regional Christian separatist movement known as the American Redoubt. Known for his far-right rhetoric, Shea was once a Republican state lawmaker but was kicked out of the state GOP caucus after an independent investigation found him guilty of domestic terrorism due to his involvement with the armed takeover of Oregon’s Malheur Wildlife Refuge in 2016. It was later revealed Shea had distributed a document, titled “Biblical Basis for War,” which, among other things, condemned same-sex marriage and suggested murdering all non-Christian males “if they do not yield” in a hypothetical war.
Shea also attended a protest in 2022 of an LGBTQ+ pride event in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho, which sits just across the state border from Spokane. Two people connected to his church were among the 31 members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front who were arrested in the back of a U-Haul at the event, with police claiming the men were planning to riot.
Shea prayed over Woodward during the August event in Spokane, standing behind the mayor, her family and Feucht as he asked God to urge Woodward and other political leaders to “stand on the foundation, the rock of Jesus Christ.”
