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SCOTUS Should State The Obvious: Religious Orgs Can Use Their Own Land For Religious Purposes

The U.S. Supreme Court can create a much-needed precedent, ensuring that religious organizations can use their property for religious purposes without being subject to restrictive and inappropriate land-use laws.

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The Missionaries of St. John the Baptist, a Catholic religious community in Kentucky, had a simple and modest plan: to build a Marian grotto (a simple outdoor religious display with statutes where people can pray) on property already owned by the religious organization. The local zoning board approved the land use. This hardly seems like a controversial scenario warranting a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, but a few neighbors objected and argued that building the grotto violated the local zoning code because the grotto was not being built next to an “arterial street” — essentially a highway.

The neighbors cited possible concerns about increased traffic and parking, but those objections seem questionable in the circumstances. The request was not for an amphitheater or a mega-church that would draw new followers, but merely for a grotto on the property.

When the neighbors appealed the zoning approval, the Kentucky Court of Appeals and the Kentucky Supreme Court sided with the neighbors and prohibited the religious organization from building its grotto. Beyond the factual issue that a grotto on a church property is unlikely to disturb anyone, there are several concerning legal implications flowing from the Kentucky Supreme Court decision.

The reality that the appeal of a complaining neighbor can overrule both the decision of a local zoning board and the right of a religious organization to use its own land for religious purposes is disturbing enough. But there is a particular religious freedom issue of national legal importance that is front and center in this case: The Kentucky Supreme Court rejected the religious organization’s Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act........

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