Boulder County has hired some high-level lawyers to help in its case against the Rocky Mountain Christian Church in Niwot. The church wants to invoke the rights of a new federal law to fight the County's decision to refuse to allow the church to expand its building on land designated for open space. Read more in the Rocky Mountain News.
This issue has been simmering along for months, and the recent hiring of more lawyers for the case shows how principled a stance the County is taking.
Last month the New York Times ran a focused expose on the issue. (Scroll down the page to "Exemptions From Zoning Rules".)
Commissioner Ben Pearlman was quoted in the article: "“People are always trying to develop their properties to the limits of the law and sometimes beyond,” Mr. Pearlman said. But the worst suburban sprawl is the consequence of “lots of little decisions that have this cumulative effect,” he continued. “We’re trying to resist this death by a thousand cuts, and preserve the land where we can.”
Should churches be exempt from growth controls?
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Much has been said about the 1st Amendment tension between free exercise and prohibition of government establishment of a favored religion. The Framers might have seen it differently, but the modern debate would be that favoring religion over non-religion, as a general proposition, is an Establishment Clause violation. The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Perons Act, the second attempt by Congress to legislate around this problem, is now at issue in the case of the Rocky Mountain Christian Church.
Thanks to Dan for providing the link to NY Times and its links to various court documents. Without taking any time to really review these, I have only one observation to offer. Conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, an often-ally of the religious right, wrote in a Court opinion over 15 years ago that generally applicable laws not targeted at the exercise of religion are not protected by the Free Exercise clause. When the highest court's right-wing champion can't agree that religion should be exempt from general laws like zoning, is there anything left holding up RLUIPA? We're still finding that out...
Longmont Richard Yale wrote a letter to the editor regrading this issue; check out http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2006/nov/17/no-headline-17elet/ and scroll down to "Church".
He believes the County is abusing religious freedom.
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