Pastor: Texas officials 'weaponizing office' to shut down church as polling site
A Texas pastor believes city officials are “weaponizing their political office” in an effort to prevent his church from being a designated polling location in the November election.
Pastor Kason Huddleston of Freedom Place Church in Rowlett, located about 10 miles northeast of Dallas, says his doors are still open despite threats by the mayor’s office to pull the church’s certificate of occupancy.
The controversy reignited earlier this month when city officials claimed to have “discovered problems with the church's certificate of occupancy, though the certificate was issued nearly a year ago,” attorneys said.
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In response to the city’s threats to revoke Freedom Place’s occupancy certificate, First Liberty Senior Counsel Jeremy Dys sent a letter on Oct. 7 to Rowlett’s Director of Community Development, Cori Reaume, urging the city to withdraw the threat, deeming it unconstitutional.
Huddleston says the warning came out of nowhere.
“All of a sudden […] the last day of September, the city manager hand-delivered a letter to our building at 6 p.m. [which] said, ‘You’ve got 10 days to rectify this,’” he said. “‘Your [certificate of occupancy] was issued in error by the city, and now we're potentially revoking it, and you've got 10 days to rectify it.’”
At that point, Huddleston contacted attorneys at First Liberty Institute “because we realized this was retaliation.”
“It was weaponizing their political office,” he added.
As of Oct. 16, the city of Rowlett has not pulled the church’s certificate of occupancy.
“The church is still operating as it always has been ever since it opened its doors,” said First Liberty attorney Ryan Gardener.
Freedom Place Church, an Assemblies of God congregation in Rowlett, a city of about 66,000, was selected by election officials as the sole early voting site for the second-consecutive year after meeting all legal requirements.
The church’s issues with Rowlett Mayor Blake Margolis date back to spring 2023, when Dallas County election officials first approached Freedom Place Church about using its facility for early and Election Day voting.
“They toured our facility,” said Huddleston. “They approved it. We got a contract.”
But when Margolis learned the election site would be located at Freedom Place, Huddleston says the mayor “literally blew his gasket.”
“If you look at the city council meeting, he was livid,” he added.
In a September 2023 email, Margolis stated that the city council was unaware of the decision to change the early voting location when it passed an ordinance the previous month, asserting that the council would “not allow voting to occur in any church building.”
Margolis also cited Huddleston’s support for former President Donald Trump as a reason for his argument.
“That’s not where voting belongs, and especially when the Pastor of this specific church has endorsed a candidate who will be on the ballot in November,” Margolis wrote.
While the mayor ultimately canceled the church’s contract as a polling place for a local city election in 2023, Margolis again raised objections over Dallas County’s selection of the church, this time citing occupancy issues.
“He didn't say anything about a church,” said Huddleston. “You can watch all of his articles. There's no mention of a church now. Now, it's all these other logistical issues which are not true; they're not valid.
"And I really believe it's because we're a church, because he's on record. […] But he can't do anything about this one.”
While some critics have accused Freedom Place of political maneuvering to secure as much as $15,400 in fees for being a polling site, Gardner said any fees collected are standard contractual practice.
“Their whole goal is to serve their community, and they were approached by Dallas County to do this, and they view it as an act of service,” he said. “To the extent that there's any sort of money changing hands, it’s simply the standard contract that they would give to anyone.
“They couldn't refuse to give that to the church, because that would be another form of problematic discrimination in itself.”
With dozens of churches serving as polling places in Dallas County, Margolis’ views are misguided, Gardener added.
“He doesn't have a leg to stand on at all,” said Gardener. “He is completely wrong about the history, and further, the Supreme Court has made clear that you cannot discriminate as the government based upon religious status. And that's exactly what the mayor's intent was here.”
Huddleston says after 22 years of working with the city of Rowlett — including hosting the city’s first-ever Juneteenth pageant and Rowlett’s citywide talent show for the last three years — he’s stunned by the mayor’s actions.
“It's very clearly because the mayor does not want elections at a church, is against the church in that area,” he said. “But our congregation knows what we do. We’re called to bless, we’re called to pray, we’re called to serve. We're very active. And so they're OK.
“We trust the Lord, and we feel like he's put us in the right steps, especially with First Liberty, to help defend us.”
Ian M. Giatti is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: [email protected].
