Judge: Missouri plaintiffs may not amend suit

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — A Missouri judge, who recently dismissed a lawsuit against five Missouri Baptist agencies, won’t allow the plaintiffs to amend the suit.

Judge Thomas Brown, who ruled March 11 that the Missouri Baptist Convention executive board and six of the convention’s churches did not have legal standing to file the original lawsuit, ruled April 7 that the convention officials could not amend the lawsuit to make individual “messengers” the plaintiffs.

Instead, the convention will file a new lawsuit that names messengers — those individuals authorized to participate in the once-a-year Baptist convention — as plaintiffs, according to convention attorney Michael Whitehead. “If the judge won’t allow us to amend under one case number … we’ll proceed with a case naming messengers,” he said. The pastors of at least five of the plaintiff churches will be named as plaintiffs in the new filing, he added.

Clyde Farris, an attorney representing Missouri Baptist University, appealed to the convention to abandon the case.

“It is the defendants’ hope and desire that those who have brought this suit, instead of spending more money and creating more acrimony trying to get someone else to file a new suit or appealing this decision, will now work with these Baptist institutions for the goals that are in the common interest of Missouri Baptists,” Farris said. “Too much time and money has been wasted.”