Churchome Forces Employees to Tithe 10 Percent of Wages, Class Action Alleges

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A proposed class action alleges Churchome unlawfully forces employees to tithe 10 percent of their income back to the Washington-based megachurch.

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The 17-page lawsuit claims Churchome, lead pastors Judah and Chelsea Smith and CEO David Kroll have engaged in a “systemic scheme of wage and hour abuse” whereby employees are required to rebate 10 percent of their paychecks back to the church each month or face “actual or threatened pressure, discipline, or termination.”

According to the case, Churchhome is prohibited under Washington law from making deductions from an employee’s wages for its own financial benefit.

As the complaint tells it, Churchome’s employee handbook states that workers are expected to “[tithe] and be generous with your time, finances, and other resources,” and that the church may “take corrective action, up to and including termination” if employees do not meet these standards.

The plaintiff, a Churchome employee hired in December 2019, says that the defendants did not mention the church’s tithing requirement in its public job posting, throughout the application process or during orientation. The lawsuit adds that the defendants continue to omit this companywide policy from current job postings and their website.

During a virtual staff meeting in April 2020, one month after Churchome was forced to shut down in‐person church services due to COVID‐19 restrictions, Judah Smith reminded employees of the church’s tithing policy, stating that “[y]ou are not as invested as you think you are [in Churchome] if there’s not a money trail,” the filing says. Smith also warned the staff that former employees had been fired because they had failed to meet this company requirement, the suit relays. 

“Afraid that she, too, would be disciplined or fired for not tithing,” the case says, “[the plaintiff] began in April 2020 to rebate ten percent of her monthly wages back to Defendants in the form of tithes,” which the suit claims were automatically withdrawn twice per month from the plaintiff’s checking account using Churchome’s electronic funds transfer system.

However, the plaintiff says she stopped tithing entirely in December 2020 after a serious car accident in August of that year created a strain on her finances. The plaintiff also says she began paying substantially higher rent in July 2021, which prevented her from strictly following the tithing policy throughout 2021.

The lawsuit claims that over the course of several months, Churchome leadership and staff repeatedly approached the plaintiff to enforce the church’s tithing policy, and the woman even received a written reprimand from her immediate supervisor in January 2022 for failing to tithe the required 10 percent of her wages back to Churchome, the complaint says.

On February 28, 2023, the plaintiff met with another supervisor after he discovered that, throughout 2022, she had only sporadically paid a portion of her income back to Churchome in amounts that were less than 10 percent of her wages, the case says. Several days later, on March 7, the supervisor informed the plaintiff that the Churchome executive team expected her to begin tithing within four weeks of the date of the message, the case states.

When asked what would happen if she was unable to meet that requirement, the supervisor strongly suggested that she would be laid off, allegedly responding: “With it being a practice of our faith on the team it is expected if you’re on the team that you tithe and if not it does sound like that would lead to being removed from staff,” the suit relays.

According to the case, Churchome leadership has approached other employees about their failure to pay 10 percent of their wages back to the church, and at least two employees have been terminated for the same policy violations, the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit seeks to cover anyone who is or has been employed by Churchome to perform work for its Washington operations since March 21, 2019.

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