Virginia Supreme Court Rejects McLean Bible Bid Today

The Virginia Supreme Court has declined McLean Bible Church's request for a rehearing in the lawsuit brought by longtime members over the church's 2021 elder election. The one-sentence order, issued on Monday, November 9, 2026, leaves the case alive and sends it back to Fairfax County Circuit Court, where the members' lawyers are now preparing to press ahead with discovery.

Virginia Supreme Court McLean Bible Church rehearing denied

The order itself could hardly be shorter. In one sentence, the court denied the petition for rehearing in the case of McLean Bible Church v. Steve Gaskins et al., and that denial affirms a ruling from the Court of Appeals of Virginia in May. That May ruling sent the case back to the circuit court to decide whether the plaintiffs can win on their legal arguments.

Rick Boyer, the attorney with Integrity Law Firm who represents the plaintiffs, told The Christian Post that his clients are now preparing the first installment of jurisdictional discovery requests. He said those requests will be submitted in Fairfax County Circuit Court in the near future. Discovery is the stage where each side can demand documents and answers from the other, and here it will focus first on a narrow question: whether the court even has the power to hear a dispute like this one.

McLean Bible Church lawsuit 2026 elder election dispute

Steve Gaskins and four other longtime members filed the original complaint over the July 2021 election of new elders. They said church leaders broke the church's own constitution by denying members the chance to cast secret ballots, and did so to push theological conservatives out of positions of power. The church has denied that account from the start.

McLean Bible Church is based in Northern Virginia. It is a nondenominational, multisite congregation co-led by evangelist Mike Kelsey and Pastor David Platt, a bestselling author and former head of the Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board. In a statement after the circuit court dismissed the lawsuit for a second time in December 2024, the elders said the case came from a small group carrying out a coordinated strategy to deride and oust David Platt, and that almost a dozen people in the group had filed a series of seperate lawsuits, with every claim over almost four years either rejected, dismissed, or withdrawn.

David Platt McLean Bible elder election court history

The case has already travelled a long road through Virginia's courts. The Fairfax County Circuit Court dismissed the members' complaint in 2022. The Court of Appeals of Virginia reversed that decision in June 2023 and sent the case back. Then, in December 2024, the circuit court dismissed the lawsuit a second time.

In May 2026, the Court of Appeals overturned that second dismissal. The appeals court ruled that the circuit court had been wrong to block a broad discovery motion from the plaintiffs, who were seeking church voting lists and member data. October's ruling from the Supreme Court added a twist of its own: the justices dismissed the church's appeal because it had not been properly filed, finding the church failed to file the notice of appeal in the Court of Appeals. The justices did not address the merits of the case at all, which is why the church asked them to take another look. Monday's order closes that door.

What happens next in Fairfax County court

What happens next will be slower and less dramatic than a Supreme Court order, but it is where the case will actually be decided. The plaintiffs' lawyers will file their discovery requests, and the court will have to decide whether the church autonomy doctrine shields the church from having to hand over voting lists and member data. If it finds the doctrine does not apply, the case moves toward a trial on the facts of the 2021 election itself.

The same tension over who leads and who decides has run through other church disputes this year, from the survivors who met Pope Leo in Argentina, as reported in Pope Leo Meets Five Abuse Survivors in Argentina, to the governance fight in the Church of England, as covered in Liberals Fall Short in Church of England Synod Vote, to the revival movement in America, as reported in Steven Andrew Launches 40-Day Revival for America Nov 7. Either way, the five-year-old dispute is not going away quietly, and the next filing in Fairfax County will show how hard each side intends to fight for it. The question now is whether a courtroom can settle what five years of argument inside the church could not, and the families on both sides are still waiting for that answer.

But the most surprising part of this story is yet to come — keep reading.