Gethsemani Baptist Church filed a complaint in federal court last week against the City of San Luis and several city officials.
According to the filing, the city near the Mexican border, shut down a food ministry that has operated since 1999 and has regularly helped hundreds of impoverished families by distributing hundreds of thousands of pounds of food while sharing the Gospel.
The complaint states that in 2022, the city began cutting support for the ministry arguing that the outreach program violated zoning laws, such as having semi-trucks in a residential area. City officials deemed the church to be engaging in “commercial-level food distribution.”
The zoning law the city cited didn’t go into effect until 2012.
The city stated that the church couldn’t operate the food ministry without a “conditional use permit,” which the church believes would be “a fruitless and cost prohibitive effort.”
“Because of city’s threats, the Church ceased almost all Food Ministry efforts and cancelled multiple events, including its annual Thanksgiving turkey drive-thru and its Christmas toy drive.”
The city is also accused of treating nearby non-religious entities located blocks from the church more favorably when it comes to their use of commercial trucks in the residential zone.