A recent series of articles in The New York Times, entitled "In God's Name," examined the troubling relationship between religious institutions and the nations' local, state and federal governments. In particular, land use is emerging as a contentious issue as disputes are taken to court and important decisions are soon to be made regarding how far religious liberty and equal protection under the First Amendment extends.
Consider the case currently pending in Boulder, Colo. between the Rocky Mountain Christian Church and the city of Boulder. The question is whether the church should be allowed to build on land that the city has specifically zoned as non-building space. The argument on the side of Boulder is fairly simple. "Look," they say, "we have zoned this land to be open, non-building land to ensure the beauty of our city and its surrounding area. Since absolutely no one can build on this space -- be they religious or commercial entities, private enterprise, or others -- Rocky Mountain Christian Church cannot build on this space, either."
The argument made by the church is not so simple. It hinges on a piece of legislation Congress passed in 2000 called the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA). The part of the Act affecting land use gives religious organizations greater latitude to challenge zoning laws that restrict their First Amendment right to free exercise of religion. In the church's argument, not being allowed to physically expand into the zoned-off land is an infringement upon both their Constitutional right to free exercise of religion and the new provisions for religious use of land assured to them by RLUIPA. They are thus taking the Boulder zoning board to court in the hope that they will prove that these zoning laws are illegal and unconstitutional.
I have serious reservations about this case. First and foremost, if the church wins the case and is allowed to build on the land, a very dangerous precedent will be set. I can only imagine and dread a decision whereby, on the legislative grounds the church is using in its argument to the court, religious institutions in America are basically given the freedom to override town zoning laws and build whenever and wherever they see fit. This is truly an affront to the legal concept of zoning and certainly not a power that should be ceded to individual religious organizations that usually cannot speak on behalf of an area's majority.
Furthermore, we as a society must be increasingly wary of extending overly favorable zoning legislation to religious groups as, in recent years, terms such as "church" have come to embrace not only halls of worship, but schools, retirement communities, fitness centers and even amusement parks. Though I certainly understand that religious communities wish to express their beliefs in new and interesting ways to keep up with the current trend of society, I fear the day when someone will cite "County of Boulder v. Rocky Mountain Christian Church" as grounds for building a religiously-affiliated oil-drilling plant on protected land in order to provide other areas of the ministry with cheaper gas.
Even worse, Rocky Mountain Church is using its stature as a publicly-recognized religious institution as the basis for altering democratically enacted zoning legislation in their favor. Though the church claims that the zoning board is denying their free exercise of religious freedom, the board is simply applying its law to all that fall within its jurisdiction. In no way can the board's action be construed as religious discrimination. If, for example, the board told the Church, "you can't build on this land because you are Christians," it would be an open-and-shut case. Or if the church were the highest bidder for the land but the land was sold by an all-Catholic zoning board to a Catholic organization, the case would again be relatively clear. But neither of these hypothetical situations resembles what is actually going on.
This case is simple. The Rocky Mountain Church wants the land and feels that, because it is a religious organization, its desires should trump those of the average citizenry. It is my belief that the church should not be given the ability to do this. Ceding zoning authority to religious institutions is a dangerous precedent for the law to set for it gives these institutions a privileged place in the law that no private group -- religious or otherwise -- deserves.
