Judge keeps David Taylor detained, denies effort to dismiss forced labor charges

By Leonardo Blair, Senior Reporter Wednesday, November 11, 2026

U.S. District Judge Susan K. DeClercq has denied a fourth request from self-styled “apostle” David E. Taylor to release him before his trial next April, a day after refusing to dismiss multiple charges of forced labor against him.

Taylor, 54, leader of the Kingdom of God Global Church in Michigan, formerly known as Joshua Media Ministries International, was indicted by a grand jury in the Eastern District of Michigan on July 23, 2025, on eight counts of forced labor, one count of conspiracy to commit forced labor, and one count of money laundering conspiracy. Prosecutors have since filed a second superseding indictment.

After a briefing and hearing on Oct. 17, 2025, Magistrate Judge Kimberly G. Altman ordered Taylor detained pending trial. Courts have since found he would pose a danger to the community if released. He has been fighting to be released before his April 20, 2027, jury trial date ever since.

“This is Taylor’s fourth bite at the apple. After Magistrate Judge Altman ordered him detained pending trial, Taylor unsuccessfully appealed. He then sought reconsideration, and he appealed to the Sixth Circuit. After each of his first three attempts to secure pretrial release failed, he returned again—but like each time before, this Court will deny Taylor’s request,” DeClercq wrote Tuesday in an order denying Taylor’s motion to reopen the detention hearing or for bond redetermination hearing and for expedited hearing.

DeClercq found that almost none of the evidence Taylor submitted was new, and that the two pieces that arguably were new, text messages and a summary of an FBI interview with an alleged victim, were not material to whether he poses a danger.

Taylor and Michelle Brannon, the executive director of KOGGC, are charged with multiple counts of forced labor and one count of money laundering conspiracy. They and church executive Kathleen Klein, known internally as “Prophetess,” are also charged with one count of conspiracy to commit forced labor, according to court documents. Klein was added to the case after Taylor and Brannon were first indicted.

Their operation is alleged to have left behind victims in Michigan, Florida, Texas and Missouri, including women who were forced to take the emergency contraception drug Plan B.

“Combating human trafficking is a top priority for the Department of Justice,” then-Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement announcing the arrests in August 2025. “We are committed to relentlessly pursuing and ending this scourge and obtaining justice for the victims.”

Taylor’s ministry reportedly ran call centers that solicited donations every day in Michigan and other states, including Florida, Texas and Missouri. Victims were allegedly forced to work at the call centers as Taylor’s “armor bearers.”

“Armor bearers were Taylor's personal servants who fulfilled Taylor’s demands around the clock. Taylor and Brannon controlled every aspect of the daily living of their victims. Victims slept in the call center facility or in a ‘ministry’ house, and Taylor and Brannon did not permit them to leave without permission,” the DOJ said in its release.

“Taylor demanded that his Armor Bearers transport women from ministry houses, airports, and other locations to Taylor’s location and ensured the women transported to Taylor took Plan B emergency contraceptives.”

The self-styled apostle and his executive director are also accused of setting “unobtainable” fundraising goals for the armor bearers at the call centers and punishing them when they failed to meet them. When fundraising numbers were low, workers’ diets were allegedly restricted to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, soup, salad and water, and they were forced to stay up until 4 a.m. or later.

In seeking to dismiss the forced labor charges against them, Taylor and Brannon argued that their words and actions are protected First Amendment religious exercise, but DeClercq noted that the “Supreme Court has repeatedly stated that actions and practices are not absolutely protected from governmental regulation simply because the actor classifies them as ‘religious.’”

“The Government may not only regulate; it may prosecute. It has long been true that the First Amendment is not a universal shield from prosecution,” the judge wrote in a 40-page opinion and order denying the defendants’ motion to dismiss on Monday.

Taylor also argued that the government’s prosecution of him is premised on the view that he is a “false prophet” and, according to the judge's summary of his arguments, “improperly turns theological disapproval into a crime, because a jury must conclude that his beliefs are false to find him guilty.”

“As the Supreme Court long ago explained, actions and beliefs are two separate concepts: The freedom to believe ‘is absolute, but in the nature of things, the [freedom to act] cannot be',” the judge wrote.

DeClercq agreed that the “truth or falsity” of Taylor’s religious beliefs cannot be tried, and said jurors must be instructed to set that question aside and evaluate only his conduct. She also wrote that the jury must be told that if the government’s claims are “based merely on threats of divine retribution,” they “cannot stand.”

Court documents note that KOGGC received approximately $50 million in donations over more than 10 years, and the funds were used in part to purchase residences and luxury vehicles for Taylor. While Taylor argued that his followers volunteered to work at his call centers, the government argued at an October 2025 detention hearing that he ordered physical assaults against members of his church as punishment for disobedience.

“Further, the Government argued, Taylor deprived KOGGC workers of food and sleep as punishments. And the Government argued that Taylor coerced women into sending him sexually explicit materials,” DeClercq wrote in Tuesday’s order, summarizing that hearing. Taylor is accused of threatening to disseminate these materials if workers defied him. At a December 2025 hearing, Taylor’s attorneys acknowledged there was evidence that church members had been physically assaulted, according to the order.

The indictment alleges Taylor and his church used religious threats to control workers, noting that “if KOGGC workers ‘disobeyed an order or failed to follow a rule,’ Defendants would ‘claim the laborer was defying God and would suffer in hell.’”

“Defendants would ‘threat[en] spiritual damnation.’ These allegations arguably straddle the border between conduct—speaking threats—and simply stating beliefs allegedly shared by Taylor and KOGGC members. This Court finds that these threats are actionable conduct, rather than unprosecutable religious beliefs,” DeClercq wrote in finding that spiritual threats may be considered “conduct” that violates the law “by their imposition of psychological harm.”

“Taylor’s argument that the workers’ conduct was voluntary is not a bar to prosecution because the Indictment makes no such allegation,” DeClercq wrote. “Rather, when read ‘in a practical sense with all the necessary implications,’ … the Indictment alleges that Taylor’s ‘laborers’ were obedient for fear of punishment.”

“Even if KOGGC members began work willingly, the force with which Taylor allegedly retained them in the enterprise means the Government may still charge him with forced labor,” she added.

DeClercq also rejected Taylor’s defense under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. She agreed that the prosecution substantially burdens his religious exercise but found that the government has a compelling interest in protecting the alleged victims and that “there are no adequate, less restrictive options.” She also denied the defendants’ request to strike the allegations about sexually explicit material from the indictment, finding they are “part and parcel of the forced labor conspiracy.”