The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected an appeal in an evangelical church’s lawsuit against the University of Maine System regarding a Belfast property the church had tried to buy.
Calvary Chapel Belfast and the UMaine System have been locked in a legal battle since November 2024, after the school rescinded its decision to sell the Hutchinson Center to the church.
Calvary’s had made emergency requests to stop the system from selling the center to another bidder. A federal judge denied the church’s motions last year, finding that the church had produced no evidence of religious animus from within the UMaine System, nor any evidence that the system engaged in a bidding process that discriminated against the church on the basis of religion.
Calvary appealed those decisions in May 2025. The appellate court’s ruling on Tuesday only deals with those requests; the case will now return to the U.S. District Court of Maine, where a judge will issue a scheduling order for discovery requests and trial.
Calvary was one of a handful of entities who bid for the Hutchinson Center in 2024. When news broke that they were the winning applicant, there was community pushback and two other bidders filed appeals, arguing that the process had not been transparent.
The UMaine System announced in September 2024 that it was re-doing the bid after identifying a procedural error in the assessment process that didn’t account for an internet network hub based in the building that served several educational and community centers nearby.
Waldo Community Action Partners, who won in the second bid, made a higher offer than the church.
In court, Calvary has argued that the UMaine System caved to outside pressure and complaints about the church’s religious teachings, and that the decision to do another bidding process was discriminatory.
The system has rejected that in court and public statements. Ryan Low, the University’s Vice Chancellor of Finance and Administration, testified in federal court that the “the one
and only ground upon which” he rescinded was “cost savings.”
In its Tuesday opinion, the appellate court recognized that District Judge Stacey Neumann deemed Low’s testimony credible and rejected Calvary’s claims that Neumann had committed an error of law.
“The district court did not abuse its discretion when it denied Calvary’s motion for a preliminary injunction because it applied the appropriate legal standards and made no clear error in its factual determination that the University’s decisions were not tainted by religious bias,” Circuit Judge Kermit Lipez wrote in the 1st Circuit’s opinion.
“Yet again, the Court has upheld that the transparent, competitive process through which we are selling the Hutchinson Center has offered fair opportunity to all parties,” UMaine System spokesperson Samantha Warren said in a statement Wednesday. “This includes those parties that may be disappointed by our decision to ultimately award the right to negotiate sale terms and conditions to a local community organization that offered nearly double the purchase price of any other bidder and well above the appraised value.”
Daniel Schmid, an attorney with Liberty Counsel who is representing Calvary Chapel, said on Wednesday he thought the 1st Circuit’s decision was wrong and that the UMaine System “acted upon the intent of the community animus” against his client.
Schmid said he looks forward to the discovery process in district court and believes that he will find evidence in records and testimony “that there’s more to this story can just a guy who thought there were cost savings.”
“Everyone knows what happened here, we’re just turning a blind eye to it,” Schmid said.