OCEAN CITY, Md. - St. Paul's by-the-Sea Episcopal Church has officially filed a lawsuit alleging the Ocean City mayor Rick Meehan and the city council are violating its First Amendment rights over the church's overnight shelter for local homeless people.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court, claims Ocean City’s enforcement actions violate the First Amendment and the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. The church is asking a judge to block the town from continuing enforcement, declare the citations invalid and award attorneys’ fees.
This comes after the town issued a $1,000 citation on June 8 to the church's reverend, Jill Williams.
“It was time to file for federal protection because we are being fined $1,000 a day since June 8th for having the shelter open,” Williams said. “The reason that those fines are not appropriate is because the zoning laws cannot prohibit us from carrying out our faith.”
Williams said the church views sheltering people as part of its religious mission, citing the Gospel of Matthew.
“We are following the gospel passage of Matthew chapter 25, where Christ compels us to feed the hungry and shelter the stranger,” Williams said. “That is the church’s mission, has always been, and we are living out the faith that we preach.”
The church details its months-long fight with the town in the lawsuit, saying the church originally started allowing homeless people to sleep in tents on the church grounds after a 2025 town ordinance banned people from sleeping in public places in Ocean City for more than 24 hours. The church says Ocean City then ordered the church to stop allowing people to sleep in tents and "to move its homeless wards inside the Church." St. Paul's by-the-Sea says they agreed and asked for time to meet fire code provisions and take safety measures, moving its homeless guest inside by April 1 this year.
Williams said she does not believe there was a zoning application for the church to submit.
“We are still a church and we are still using the building, as the church has always used the building, to help the needy,” Williams said. “So this is just an expected use for use of a church building.”
Williams said the church purchased bunk beds and created an overnight shelter setup inside its outreach space. She said the church worked with the fire marshal, including changing the smoke detector sound to a lower frequency and spacing the beds and aisles as directed.
“We were in compliance and we made sure that the aisles and the spaces between the beds were the correct distance that they gave us,” Williams said.
Williams said the church typically shelters about 25 to 35 people overnight, far below the fire marshal capacity for the space. She also said the citations were issued to her and the church’s senior warden personally, rather than to the church itself.
“I have people walking across the street from City Hall, and finding both myself and the senior warden of our church,” Williams said. “They did not give the church a citation. They gave me personally a citation and him personally a citation.”
Ocean City officials said they cannot comment on the specifics of active litigation.
In a statement, City Manager Terry McGean said the town has a history of supporting programs and services for individuals experiencing homelessness, including financial and other support for Diakonia in West Ocean City and support for the Worcester County Homeless Outreach Team.
McGean said the town also has a responsibility to ensure that properties and facilities follow zoning, building, occupancy and safety codes.
“Code provisions are applied consistently to all properties in Ocean City in order to protect the health, safety, and welfare of both occupants and the broader community,” McGean said.
The lawsuit now puts the disagreement before a federal judge, who will be asked to weigh the church’s religious freedom claims against the town’s position that it is enforcing local code requirements.
