Los Angeles County fined Grace Community Church $1,000 for violating a COVID-19 sign ordinance–not because of the content of the signs, but because of their placement.
The signs read: Attention: By entering the Grace Community Church campus, you assume the risk of contracting COVID-19, and you agree that the church cannot be held responsible if that happens. Please do not enter if you have an elevated temperature, a cough, or any flu-like symptoms. A county health inspector said that they were in violation because they were not placed in the proper areas. The county health inspector said the signs should have been placed in the front and the back entrances.
According to a report on Todd Starnes, the county also said the signs lack the instruction telling people to wash their hands or use sanitizer; nor do they say to wear face coverings or maintain social distancing.
Special counsel for John MacArthur and Grace Community Church Jenna Ellis posted on Twitter: “Apparently signs asking people not to enter if they have an elevated temperature or symptoms of Covid (located at every entrance & exit) aren’t good enough for LA County. The bullying and harassment continues. This is NOT about health. LA County just wants to shut down church.”
Because MacArthur’s Grace Community Church has refused to comply with indoor gathering restrictions from the state of California, the battle continues. This latest fine for Pastor John MacArthur and Grace Community Church comes a week after Los Angeles County terminated a lease agreement for a parking lot the church has used for over 40 years.
Some are hoping this week that the Los Angeles Superior Court will rule on what it heard on Friday September 4, 2020, when both Los Angeles County and Grace Community Church gave their arguments to the court. Los Angeles County’s argument says Grace Community Church is in violation of the county’s COVID-19 mandates, explicitly the county’s order of no indoor gatherings. Grace Community Church’s argument says the current mandates the county is attempting to enforce go against their constitutional rights to freely worship and gather indoors.
John MacArthur and Grace Community Church have dodged legal action four times from Los Angeles County due to holding indoor services and refusing to comply with the county’s orders. John MacArthur recently told his congregation “There is no pandemic,” referring to a recent report released by the CDC. MacArthur said, “I don’t want to offer myself as any kind of an expert, but a rather telling report came out this week and for the first time, we heard the truth. The CDC…said that in truth, six percent of the deaths that have occurred can be directly attributable to COVID. Ninety-four percent cannot. Of the 160,000 people that have died, 9,210 actually died from COVID.”
Rampant misinformation about the report was corrected by the CDC. Speaking to CNN, Bob Anderson, chief of mortality statistics at the CDC, explained that the misinformation being spread was a case of misinterpreting standard death certificate language. “In 94 percent of deaths with COVID-19, other conditions are listed in addition to COVID-19. These causes may include chronic conditions like diabetes or hypertension,” Anderson said in a statement. The six percent of deaths account for those certificates that list COVID-19 only as the cause of death.