A Christian couple in Pennsylvania has filed a lawsuit after government officials ordered them to stop reading the Bible and singing Christian hymns at home — or face fines of up to $500 per day, plus court costs, for every day the Bible is studied or hymns are sung on their private property. 

Officials from Sewickley Heights Borough, near Pittsburgh, ordered Scott and Terri Fetterolf last year not to use their 35-acre private property to host Christian activities, according to the lawsuit filed this week in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.

“The borough has no business overseeing a group of people reading and discussing a book together on private property — even if that book is the Bible,” Randall Wenger, chief counsel for the Independence Law Center, which is representing the couple, said in a statement posted by Pennsylvania Family Institute on its