DOJ supports church in North Carolina zoning fight

Federal prosecutors filed a federal court statement supporting a North Carolina church in a legal battle against county officials, according to a Tuesday statement from the Department of Justice. Summit Church-Homestand Heights Baptist Church accused the Chatham County Board of Commissioners of breaking the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act by denying the church’s zoning application for a new building. This federal law protects religious groups from discrimination through unnecessarily burdensome or unequal application of land use regulations.

The church has about 12,000 members and 13 locations, according to data compiled by Outreach magazine. 

What are the facts of the case? Summit Church-Homestand Heights Baptist Church outgrew its former meeting space at a local high school and found nearly 100 acres of land where it hoped to build its own church campus. However, the intended land was already zoned for a compact mixed-use village center. The church submitted an application to the county to rezone the parcels for a church, but the county refused to do so.

The church accused the county of levying unnecessary burdens and administering unequal treatment that it would not have shown to nonreligious groups. The church’s lawsuit noted that the board approved the previous rezoning application for the same parcels to be developed for nonreligious purposes. Summit Church-Homestand Heights Baptist Church is now petitioning for a preliminary injunction order requiring officials to approve the church’s rezoning requests.

How has the county countered the accusations? The county filed a motion to dismiss the case and argued that the zoning decision did not fall under the Religious Land Use Act because it was a legislative decision made under state law. However, the DOJ pushed back on this argument in its interest filing, insisting that the federal land law does protect the church from zoning discrimination. Chatham County can’t use state zoning laws to evade federal law, the DOJ argued in the Friday filing. Federal prosecutors also noted that the injunction sought by the church was commonly granted and upheld among various circuit courts.

The DOJ’s civil rights lawyers are committed to defending religious liberties just as the founders intended, according to the division’s Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon. The latest filing came about a month after prosecutors backed a California church fighting similar zoning laws.

Dig deeper: Read my report on the Trump administration pushing for equal application of the FACE Act, a law commonly weaponized against pro-life protesters.