McLean Bible Church Lawsuit Continues After Virginia Supreme Court Dismisses Appeal

Five longtime church members walked into court in 2021 and said their church had rewritten the rules to silence their votes. Four years later, McLean Bible Church tried to get Virginia's highest court to make the case go away. The court said no.

The Virginia Supreme Court dismissed the church's appeal on October 2, the ruling reported October 20, 2026, by the Christian Post. The dismissal was technical — the justices found the church failed to file the notice of appeal in the Court of Appeals, so the appeal was not perfected in the manner provided by law. They did not rule on the merits. But the effect is the same: the lawsuit lives, and the case goes back to Fairfax County circuit court.

Their attorney, Rick Boyer, framed the dispute in terms any contract lawyer would understand:

"The underlying dispute here is not a religious decision at all. It is a pure contract dispute, centered around the fact that the church constitution permits all members 16 and older to vote in elections for the board of elders unless they are inactive." — Rick Boyer, attorney for the plaintiffs

David Platt Church Lawsuit 2026: The Disputed 2021 Elder Election

At the center of it all is a July 18, 2021, elder election at the northern Virginia megachurch. David Platt, the author of Radical, has pastored the multisite church since 2017. Five longtime members — Steve Gaskins, Michael Manfredi, Roland Smith, Deborah Ash and Kevin Elwell — allege the election violated the church constitution.

The constitution, they say, permits every member 16 and older to vote in elder elections unless that member is inactive. The plaintiffs allege members were designated inactive arbitrarily — a move that, if true, let church leaders decide who got to vote and who did not. That is the kind of procedural move that turns a church election into a courtroom fight.

The dispute has already survived more than four years of litigation. It lived through an earlier dismissal. It was revived by an appellate ruling in 2026, as covered by Protestia and ChurchLeaders. Now the Virginia Supreme Court has kept it alive again — not with a ringing endorsement of the plaintiffs' claims, but with a ruling that says the church did not even file its appeal correctly.

Church Elder Election Dispute: What Happens in Fairfax County

The case now returns to Fairfax County circuit court for limited discovery. The question before the court is a narrow but consequential one: whether the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine — the church-autonomy rule that keeps courts out of religious governance — applies here. Discovery will test whether the paper trail backs the plaintiffs' account, the kind of transparency a school district failed to show before it paid $275,000.

That is the hinge the whole case swings on. If the court decides this is a religious decision protected by church autonomy, the case likely dies. If it agrees with Boyer's framing — that this is a pure contract dispute about a constitution's voting rules — the discovery goes forward, and the church's internal election process goes under the microscope.

Church leaders have argued, in effect, that courts have no business refereeing church elections. The plaintiffs answer that a written constitution is a written constitution, and that "inactive" cannot mean whatever leadership needs it to mean on election day. Both positions have deep roots in American church-state law, which is exactly why this case keeps refusing to end.

For the wider church world, the case is a cautionary tale with uncomfortable edges. Andy Stanley's transition at North Point showed how a leadership change can be handled with order and honor. McLean's saga shows the other path: disputed elections, arbitrary labels, and a congregation's trust litigated line by line in a county courthouse. It is the kind of church revivel nobody prayed for — an old lesson about power and accountability, learned the hard way.

Virginia Supreme Court Church Ruling: The Bigger Question

Strip away the procedural language and the court's ruling says something simple, in the justices' own words:

"Finding that the appeal was not perfected in the manner provided by law because the appellant failed to file the notice of appeal in the Court of Appeals, the Court dismisses the petition." — Virginia Supreme Court ruling

A megachurch with every legal resource at its disposal could not get its appeal filed in the right court. That detail will not decide the merits, but it sets the tone. The plaintiffs have outlasted every attempt to end this, and the calendar keeps working in favor of whoever is willing to keep showing up.

The stakes go beyond one Virginia megachurch. If Fairfax County decides that church constitutions are enforceable contracts — that member voting rights mean what the document says they mean — every large church in America with a disputed election will be watching. And if the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine wins, it will be another reminder that in American law, the churchhouse door is very hard for a judge to open.

Four years in, neither side has blinked. The discovery in Fairfax County will decide what comes next — internal emails, membership rolls, the paper trail of who was called inactive and why. The plaintiffs have waited since 2021 for those documents. They are about to get their look. For churches watching from the pews, the contrast with the Appalachian State revival's 700 baptisms is stark: one church is filling baptistries while another is filling court dockets. Watch what the paper trail shows, and watch whether a constitution written for a congregation can hold up in a courtroom.

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