The Minnesota Department of Human Services has filed a lawsuit against Zion Baptist Church in Minneapolis, led by former Minneapolis City Council member and convicted felon Brian Herron Sr., alleging the church misused $2.5 million in grants meant to provide mental health, substance abuse, violence prevention, and other services to the local community.
In an 11-page complaint filed in the Hennepin County District Court earlier this month, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Assistant Attorney General Aaron Winter accused the church of breach of contract and unjust enrichment for the alleged misuse of the funds they called “morally unconscionable.”
The church is accused of accepting approximately $2.4 million in funds from the Minnesota Department of Human Services between October 2022 and April 2025 to provide the services but failed to properly account for how the grants were used through appropriate record keeping, including the production of an audit.
“Zion’s knowing acceptance and retention of grant funds that it did not use for a permissible purpose, for which no documentation of permissible use exists, or for which Zion failed to provide adequate supporting documentation, enriched Zion in a manner which is both legally unjustifiable and morally unconscionable,” the lawsuit states.
The church allegedly received its first grant of $1.6 million to provide services from Oct. 5, 2022, to June 30, 2024. The second grant they received was over $1.4 million, “to develop a mental health emergency preparedness plan for communities of color statewide; tracking eligible interventions and service recipients; establishing and developing other wellness collaboratives across the state; provision of a statewide Annual Community Violence Prevention Summit; and service enhancements to address behavioral health crises experienced by children, youth, young adults, and their families.”
That second contract was fully executed on July 9, 2024, and was expected to last until June 30, 2025, but it was terminated for cause on April 30, 2025.
The lawsuit states that the church was supposed to disburse the grants, in part, through a collaborative of subcontracting agencies and services to the North Minneapolis community with strict reporting guidelines, but that never happened.
Pastor Herron, a former Minneapolis City Council member, was sentenced to one year in prison in 2002 after he pleaded guilty to federal extortion charges. He admitted to requesting $10,000 from local business owner Selwin Ortega in exchange for lenient regulation of Ortega’s 10 Las Americas supermarkets, The Minnesota Daily reported at the time.
Minnesota Statute 16B.981 requires grant applicants to certify that no “principals” of the organization have been convicted of a felony financial crime within the last 10 years. Principals of the organization include board members, public officials, or staff with authority to access or determine the use of grant funds. Organizations may also be ineligible if leadership has been convicted of crimes involving fraud, particularly in obtaining federal funds. The law also requires state agencies to conduct a risk assessment for grants of $50,000 or more.
The Minnesota Attorney General’s office declined to discuss the case when asked why Herron’s church was given the multi-year grants with his criminal past. Winter referred questions to the Minnesota Department of Human Services. A spokesperson from the government agency could not immediately respond on Monday when asked why a review of controls was not done on the first grant before disbursing funds for the second.
The representative could also not immediately respond to questions about a risk assessment of the church under Herron’s leadership.
Zion Baptist Church did not respond to calls for comment from The Christian Post.
The lawsuit states that officials at the church claimed to offer required services in collaboration with a group of 17 subrecipient agencies called The Wellness Collaborative, or TWC. They were allegedly engaged through signed memoranda of understanding with clauses stating that Zion is financially responsible for all funds provided to subrecipients.
The Minnesota DHS’s Office of Internal Controls & Accountability found that some current or former Zion staff were paid as contractors rather than employees while serving as TWC subrecipient agencies.
“At least three Zion staff were paid as contractors rather than as employees, while owning TWC subrecipient agencies also paid by Zion as service providers. According to Zion, these three staff and their associated subrecipient agencies received a total of $955,493 in grant funds, nearly 40% of all grant payments to Zion,” the lawsuit states.
“In addition, at least two former Zion staff were paid by Zion as contractors while also owning their own subrecipient agencies. According to Zion, these two former staff received $271,750 in grant payments,” it adds. The watchdog office also found that the church did not complete the required audits for any of the grants.
The allegations against Zion Baptist Church come as U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that faith-based organizations that meet evidence-based addiction recovery standards will now be able to access federal funding under the Trump administration’s new policy on tackling drug addiction and homelessness nationwide.
“We are bringing faith-based providers fully into this work,” Kennedy said at Prevention Day, the largest government-sponsored gathering dedicated to advancing the prevention of substance use, hosted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in February.
“This is a chronic disease. It’s a physical disease. It’s a mental disease; it’s an emotional disease. But above all, it’s a spiritual disease. And we need to recognize that. And faith-based organizations play a critical role … [in] helping people reestablish their connections to community.”
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