The Supreme Court just agreed to take up a case that could reshape how every church in America is treated when it tries to build. Last week, the Court granted certiorari in Missionaries of Saint John the Baptist v. Frederic to define what counts as a “substantial burden” on religious exercise under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA).
A Catholic religious organization in Park Hills, Kentucky, wanted to build a small chapel on land next to its church. The construction would be about the size of a backyard swimming pool. The city’s board approved the permit, but neighbors sued, and the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled against the church.
The court’s reasoning was alarming. It said that being barred from building a chapel was “a mere inconvenience” because the church could build a smaller one somewhere else. It also called the burden self-imposed because the church knew about the ordinance before it applied.
Under that logic, a complete ban on a religious use of your own property isn’t a substantial burden as long as a judge thinks you could worship some other way. Judges, not believers, would decide what matters to the faith.
The ACLJ filed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to take this case. We told the Justices that lower courts have been eroding RLUIPA’s protections by adding qualifiers Congress never wrote. Congress passed this law to stop local governments from treating churches as second-class property owners, and it told courts to read the statute in favor of broad protection of religious exercise.
The grant confirms that RLUIPA’s land-use protections have gone too long without guidance from the Supreme Court. Now that the Court has taken the case, the ACLJ will file an amicus brief on the merits, standing with houses of worship across the country as the Justices decide this question.
