Pastors Charged with Operating an Unlicensed Church Day-Care Center

A husband-and-wife pastoral team in California may have to pay more than $30,000 in fines for violating a state law requiring day-care centers to be licensed.

Ron and Linda Norris, pastors of Lighthouse Foursquare Church in Santa Monica, are scheduled for trial in April. Ron Norris could face eight years in prison, and his wife could face a nine-year sentence. At the request of their denomination, they recently moved their “Weekday Sunday School” program off church grounds and into the homes of several church members.

The Weekday Sunday School provides care and instruction for children aged five and under. The state contends that the facility is operated as a day-care center and thus required to be licensed.

“We’re not a baby-sitting organization,” says Ron Norris in response. He said the school offers “elements of teaching and training.” Church officials contend the school is a ministry of the church and so is protected from government interference by the First Amendment.

Gale Wright, of the California Department of Social Services (DSS), said the Weekday Sunday School models the traits of day-care centers. Parents must pay for services, and the facility is open on a drop-in basis from 6:30 A.M. to 6:30 P.M. She said the school operates “exactly like any other day-care center throughout the state that we are required to license.”

Wright added that an attorney for the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel said in a letter the denomination’s policy is to comply with “licensing regulations wherever they apply.”

Authorities moved against the Norrises’ church in January at the request of the DSS’s Community Care Licensing Division. Several DSS officers and armed police officers entered church buildings to confiscate records.

Santa Monica Deputy District Attorney Leland Harris said state and county agencies are concerned about the children’s health and well being. “What they preach to the children, biblically or philosophically, is of no relevance,” he said.

Charges against the Weekday Sunday School list some 40 violations of fire, building, health, and safety codes. Ron Norris questions the charges, saying local fire officials visited the church about six months ago and reported no major violations. However, the fire department says it has no record of a visit to the church in the last five years.

The church is also at odds with state rules that prohibit corporal punishment. Ron Norris said such punishment is a biblical way to discipline children and is used only in controlled circumstances and after considerable thought. At the Weekday Sunday School, he said, it consists only of a rare “swat or spank.”

Norris has implied his church is a victim of harassment designed to discourage the growing political activity among his congregants. Since 1983, five church members have run for seats on the Santa Monica school board and the city council. In addition, Linda Norris is campaign manager for a U.S. congressional candidate.

“[The state’s] sole concern is not for the welfare of the children, but rather to gain control,” Linda Norris said. “Children were not given to the state to care for, but rather were given to parents by God.”

In addition to the Weekday Sunday School, the Norrises’ church operates a school for children in kindergarten through twelfth grade. State law does not require such schools to be licensed. However, church officials say they fear that if they agree to license their Weekday Sunday School, they might have to fight the same battle to keep their kindergarten-through-twelfth-grade school free from state control.

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