Federal prosecutor comes to evangelical church’s aid

NEW YORK—An evangelical church in New York has won its zoning battle with the City of Port Jervis thanks to help from a federal prosecutor, a rare intervention on behalf of a church in a small city. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, the federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, won the settlement after city officials tried to oust the church from their downtown district through a new zoning law.

“With this lawsuit and consent decree requiring the City of Port Jervis to repeal or amend a local law that banned places of worship in two of its central business districts, we help to ensure free religious exercise in the city,” said Bharara in a statement on Tuesday.

Bharara is an Obama appointee, but he has prosecuted Democrats and Republicans alike. He successfully prosecuted conservative author and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza, Democratic Speaker of the New York Assembly Sheldon Silver, and Republican state Senate leader Dean Skelos, all for political corruption. On Wednesday, after he met with President-elect Donald Trump, Bharara announced he had agreed to remain as U.S. attorney.

In the course of the dispute, the church had to relocate to another building nearby, but Bharara’s office brought the case to a successful conclusion “faster than anyone expected,” said Bill Onofry, the church’s lawyer. The city’s lawyer did not immediately return a request for comment.

Goodwill Evangelical Presbyterian Church, a congregation of about 1,500, has three locations about 70 miles northwest of New York City. In 2015, the church had a contract on a property for its third location, in downtown Port Jervis, New York. But the city had plans for a new brewery and gastropub to open on the same street, and New York law forbids the sale of alcohol within 200 feet of a church.

Just before the church was supposed to close on the property, which at that time was in a zoning district that allowed houses of worship, the city adopted a new zoning ordinance banning houses of worship in the area. According to the new law, “places of worship may have a detrimental effect on business, commercial, and community development” because they may deter the “expansion of business” and would overwhelm parking spaces. But the zoning district still permitted other nonprofits and schools to move into the area.

The decision caught the pastors at the church by surprise. They learned about the meeting on the ordinance in the local newspaper. Goodwill’s senior pastor, John Torres, said he felt the law “devalued” the church in a struggling downtown community where opioid addiction is a problem.

“We were there to bless the community, to help address the drug addiction problems, other problems—that’s what drew us,” Torres said. He understood the desire to grow business downtown, and said the church would have patronized the brewery at least to buy sandwiches at lunch.

The church withdrew from the purchase, suffering some financial loss. But the Catholic Archdiocese of New York offered to rent the evangelical church space from the Knights of Columbus. Torres, who also serves as a military chaplain, knew Cardinal Timothy Dolan from the archdiocese, and his superior in the chaplaincy was a Catholic priest.

“Up here in the Northeast, evangelicals and Catholics sometimes have a lot more in common than evangelicals and liberal Protestants,” Torres said. The church continued its addiction recovery efforts in Port Jervis at its new location.

After the city passed the ordinance, Onofry sent letters to the city urging it to reconsider, saying the ordinance violated the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), which protects religious organizations from discrimination in zoning. Onofry said the city responded once, denying the violation, but didn’t respond again. He then contacted the Department of Justice (DOJ).

The church pursued the issue “to right a wrong so that others will learn and, hopefully, avoid future violation of RLUIPA,” Onofry said.

The DOJ attorney was “very responsive,” he said, but made no promises about an investigation or prosecution. In May, the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, under Bharara, took up the case. In late November, the office filed a lawsuit alleging the City of Port Jervis had discriminated against places of worship in passing the new law.

Almost immediately, the city agreed to a consent decree, which requires it to rescind the law and city officials to take training on RLUIPA. The city cannot pass new zoning laws that discriminate against houses of worship without a compelling interest and through the least restrictive means.

Goodwill, thanks to the pastors’ relationships with the local Catholic community, found another property several miles from its original property, in a shuttered Catholic church.

“We want to have a positive relationship with all these people,” Torres said about the city officials. “We didn’t really come to do battle with the city. We don’t want to cause loss. … My prayer is that they all end up in our church.”