Liberty Counsel filed an emergency motion with the Florida Supreme Court on behalf of Coastal Family Church seeking a pause on a temporary injunction that prohibits the church in Flagler Beach from holding in-person worship services or any other religious assemblies. Pastor Roderick Palmer is asking the state’s High Court for relief before Saturday, February 21, 2026, so he and his congregants can resume their First Amendment right to religious exercise on the church’s own property. The Fifth District Court of Appeal had briefly stayed the lower court injunction allowing the church to hold services, but later chose on February 13 to lift the stay and put the injunction back in effect.

The emergency motion states the injunction is an unconstitutional restriction on the First Amendment rights of speech, assembly, and religious exercise, and violates Florida’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act law by preventing the church from using its own property to gather and worship. The church has already suffered irreparable harm from having been forcibly closed for two Sunday services and being unable to host other religious gatherings, such as a marriage seminar and a funeral service, noted Liberty Counsel.

The church, located in the Flagler Square strip mall, has been sued by its property association Flagler Square – JAX, Inc. over alleged parking congestion and a condominium covenant that the association interprets as prohibiting “public assembly.” Despite no evidence of parking problems, the Seventh Judicial Circuit Court issued the injunction. Since then, the property management company has used police on two Sundays to ensure the church did not hold religious services and abided by the injunction.

Flagler Beach police confirm with Coastal Family Church leaders on Sunday, January 25, 2026, that no in-person worship services are being held in accordance with the injunction.

“Let that sink in – a Florida court told religious worshipers in Florida that should they gather together in violation of a court order prohibiting religious worship services, their pastor and shepherd would be subject to contempt citations and punishment,” reads the emergency motion. “A more egregious violation of the First Amendment is difficult to fathom.”

Liberty Counsel noted that both the Seventh Judicial Circuit’s and the Fifth District’s orders “punish” Coast Family Church and its congregants for church attendance while the condominium association lets other non-religious assemblies meet without restriction on the other properties in the strip mall.

This is a prior restraint on religious assembly and worship and is unconstitutional under the First Amendment, wrote Liberty Counsel. 

“If prior restraints are unconstitutional to protect national security, grand jury secrecy, and a defendant’s fair trial rights, they are emphatically unconstitutional to protect speculative parking congestion,” reads the motion.

Liberty Counsel also filed this week an appeal of the injunction with the Florida Fifth District Court of Appeal.

In the appeal, Liberty Counsel argues that the Seventh Judicial Circuit’s injunction is a ban on all “public assembly” for the church, which is a total ban on religious worship. The “defective” injunction violates constitutional rights, ignores governing statutes, ignores the church’s defenses, and relied on no evidence which demands the order to be vacated, concluded Liberty Counsel.

Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “This injunction unconstitutionally shutters a house of worship with no compelling government interest to do so. Every Sunday that the doors of Coastal Family Church remain closed inflicts irreparable spiritual and constitutional injury on its congregation. The U.S. Constitution and Florida laws are clear that Coastal Family Church has the right to hold church services on church property and that restrictive covenants cannot ban religious assembly. This injunction must be stayed and reversed.”