A California GOP lawmaker under quarantine orders attended a prayer event with thousands of worshipers and spoke without a mask

• California's Republican Senate Minority Leader broke quarantine orders to attend and speak at a large prayer event on Sunday, the Los Angeles Times reported.
• Sen. Shannon Grove was ordered to quarantine until September 9 due to close contact with a fellow lawmaker who received positive coronavirus test results on August 26.
• The event itself also broke a number of coronavirus guidelines by exceeding its permit of 1,000 attendees, many of whom did not wear masks or maintain physical distance.

A California lawmaker who was supposed to be under quarantine is fielding criticism after she attended a large prayer event at the California State Capitol over Labor Day weekend, even giving a speech to a crowd of thousands.

Sen. Shannon Grove, the Republican minority leader of the California Senate, had previously been barred from entering the building because she and her colleagues were exposed to a different lawmaker who tested positive for the virus on August 26, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The California Department of Public Health reportedly told Grove and eight other senators to quarantine for 14 days until September 9, even if they tested negative for the virus.

Grove, along with thousands of other Californians, attended the Let Us Worship event on Sunday. Few attendees wore masks that day, and participants stayed tightly packed together outside the Capitol, the Sacramento Bee reported.

—Senator Shannon Grove (@shannongrove) September 9, 2020

"We are gonna worship like we've never worshiped before, and I declare that after all of this is over tonight, the remnant, the residue of this worship will saturate this ground and seep into that building," Grove told the audience, according to the newspaper. She was not wearing a mask during her speech, the local ABC affiliate KXTV reported.

Grove's office did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

The California Highway Patrol authorized the event, but according to a permit, the crowd size was meant to be capped at 1,000 attendees.

—Sean Feucht (@seanfeucht) September 7, 2020

CHP later acknowledged that the crowd had swelled to close to 3,000 people — though organizer Sean Feucht estimated it was 12,000 — and that officers had to remind attendees who "failed to socially distance," the Associated Press reported. Authorities ultimately decided to let the event continue since it was relatively short.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom condemned the attendees on Tuesday for failing to take proper precautions in preventing coronavirus transmission.

"If you get a permit to do something and you say you're going to do the right thing, then you need to do the right thing," Newsom said, according to the Los Angeles Times. "It does not help to have thousands and thousands of people not practicing physical distancing or social distancing not wearing masks — in fact, quite the contrary — when literally someone can lose their lives. And I know that's not the intent of anyone that organizes these events, but it may be the outcome when you organize an event that grows larger than what you had asserted it to be and those mitigations were not put into place."