A Permit to Have Friends Over

In Ohio, the current standard is that your friends can come over to party without a permit but not to pray. That can’t be right.

M. Walter | July 28, 2026

Someone got wind of a dozen guys getting together at a neighbor’s house and complained to the mayor of the town to “put a stop to it.”

I left out one crucial fact in this scenario: it was a gathering of Orthodox Jews, for the purpose of prayer. It seems obvious to me that this was the so-called problem. And we’ll go over why, but first, the particulars.

Below is the opening of a July 22nd Washington Post piece, entitled “Hosting a prayer at your house? You might have to ‘cease and desist.’”

The Supreme Court agreed last month to hear a case that asks a remarkable question: Can the government require a homeowner to obtain a permit before inviting friends to his house for prayer? [snip]Advertisement if (window.publir_show_ads) { document.write(''); } In January 2021, Daniel Grand, an Orthodox Jewish homeowner in University Heights, Ohio, emailed roughly a dozen friends inviting them to his house for a Shabbat minyan. Soon afterward, a neighbor informed the city about Grand’s email, complaining and asking the mayor to ‘put a stop to this.’ Under the city’s zoning ordinance, ‘houses of worship’ require a special-use permit. Acting on the complaint, the mayor called Grand regarding what he described as an ‘urgent matter.’ Later that day, a city official ordered Grand to ‘immediately cease and desist’ using his home as a ‘place of religious assembly’ until he obtained the permit. Although Grand maintained that hosting a minyan in his home did not make it a house of worship, he complied. He canceled the gathering and applied for the permit the city demanded. What followed was a contentious zoning process. More than 100 people attended a virtual public hearing about it, after which the city’s planning commission tabled Grand’s application…Advertisement if (publir_show_ads) { googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.pubads().addEventListener("slotRenderEnded", function(event) { if........

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