Rocky Mountain Christian Church expansion and Boulder County’s land-use fight
Rocky Mountain Christian Church expansion has become a closely watched test of religious land-use protections as Boulder County commissioners continue to deny permission to expand on land already zoned for that purpose. The article argues the county’s actions conflict with federal law and constitutional protections.
- Boulder County denied Rocky Mountain Christian Church’s expansion plans despite the property’s zoning.
- The church sued in federal court, citing constitutional protections and RLUIPA.
- The article contends the county’s legal strategy is likely to fail and could be costly.
- Boulder County denied Rocky Mountain Christian Church’s expansion plans despite the property’s zoning.
- The church sued in federal court, citing constitutional protections and RLUIPA.
- The article contends the county’s legal strategy is likely to fail and could be costly.
By Wayne Laugesen
Editor’s Note: As megachurches grow larger and larger, neighbors are getting more and more nervous about having a church in their backyard. “Our neighborhood will become clogged with never-ending traffic,” they say. Because of the resistance, a number of churches have been battling for their legal right to buy and develop land.
No church has had a more difficult time than Rocky Mountain Christian Church in Boulder County, Colorado. The congregation has beautiful facilities on a sizable piece of property. Their facilities are rather modest by megachurch standards. Yet the county is refusing to allow the church to expand on its own land, which is already zoned for such a purpose. Flouting new federal regulations that force municipalities to allow churches the same rights as any other builder, the county continues to deny the church’s applications for building permits.
The Justice Department has come alongside the church, and Boulder County has decided to fight them all the way to the Supreme Court. The dispute is being closely followed nationwide. A significant article has recently appeared in The New York Times.
We thought you might like to read what one Boulder County resident had to say.
Moments before Boulder County commissioners denied the expansion plans of Rocky Mountain Christian Church, Commissioner Tom Mayer responded to a video church leaders had shown of children dancing and grooving to contemporary Christian tunes. Church elders were trying to show commissioners how Rocky Mountain Christian creates a fun and constructive community for our youth.
Mayer took this opportunity, in the kindest and most nonthreatening way, to explain that he’s the son of a preacher. In what seemed tongue-in-cheek, Mayer questioned whether his father would approve of Rocky Mountain Christian’s worship style. It was a safe way for Mayer to tell these people he didn’t take them or their religion seriously. His comments came after a few useful idiots who live near the church questioned whether Rocky Mountain Christian is really a church—questions posed by people who are openly hostile to First Amendment protections.
Of course, commissioners deny that religion played a role in their decision to reject the application to expand the church by 132,000 square feet. Commissioners said it would ruin the rural character of the neighborhood. Never mind that churches, more than anything else, have defined neighborhood character since time immemorial.
Rocky Mountain Christian sued in federal court, claiming the county’s niggling violated constitutional protections of free religious practices and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA).
Commissioners, meanwhile, sought a declaratory judgment in federal court, hoping a judge would decide they had not violated federal law. The request was denied, and the judge told commissioners to plead their case in court. Dismissing the request March 19, Federal District Judge Marcia Kreiger wrote: “It is clear that the declaratory action is nothing more than a procedural maneuver by the board [of county commissioners] to seize a strategic advantage.”
County officials hoped a declaratory judgment would weaken the church’s lawsuit, and would prevent the county from having to pay the church’s legal fees should the church prevail in court. Prepare to pay, because the county is certain to lose—as it well should.
Protecting Religion
Local governments have used planning and zoning to discriminate against minorities and religious factions since shortly after New York City first applied zoning regulations in 1916.
In nine hearings over the course of three years in the late “90s, Congress compiled “massive evidence” of widespread contemporary discrimination against religious institutions by state and local governments. A Brigham Young University study found that 20 percent of cases adversely affecting the location of religious institutions involved Jewish organizations, even though Jews account for only 2 percent of the U.S. population. Another study, documenting 29 Chicago-area jurisdictions, revealed that secular land-use applications—such as fraternal lodges, meeting halls, and health clubs—were given permits, while similar plans by religious organizations typically were denied.
One expert testified to Congress that a pattern of abuse uses pretexts such as traffic, safety, or behavioral concerns “to mask the actual goal of prohibiting constitutionally protected religious activity.”
Congress heard about the 50 elderly Jews who were forbidden by Los Angeles leaders to meet for prayer in a private home, even though similar assemblies for secular activities were allowed. They heard about a New York beach community that barred a synagogue because “it would bring traffic on Friday nights.” In response to such outrages, Congress passed RLUIPA.
An overwhelming body of case law upholds the fact that a religious institution—any religious institution—has rights that exceed the authority of local governments to enforce arbitrary planning and zoning rules that inhibit religion. In Seattle, the First Covenant Church came under the city’s Landmark Preservation Ordinance, which prohibited church leaders from making changes to the building’s exterior. The Washington State Supreme Court struck down the Seattle ordinance, saying it violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.
Recent court decisions negating the power of governments to inhibit religion are common, in and out of the planning and zoning arena. A federal court told Nebraska regents they can’t require freshmen to live in state dorms, if they prefer to live in off-campus religious housing, such as Christian Student Fellowship House. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Sunni Muslims working as police officers for Newark, New Jersey, can have beards despite the department’s policy banning facial hair.
Pursuing Deity
Yet Boulder County commissioners don’t get it. They believe it’s some kind of a mistake that Congress passed a law—to defend the Bill of Rights—that gives churches immunity from abusive local control. Commissioners penned a letter to the Colorado congressional delegation, urging members “to repeal or substantially modify the intrusive and unnecessary aspects of this law.”
Quoted in the Boulder Daily Camera, Commissioner Ben Pearlman said: “This law, as written, may very well require us to elevate religious uses above everything else.”
With all due respect commissioner, that is exactly what the law set forth to do. Though you are a bright and kind public servant, this law negates some of your authority. This country was founded as a place to freely pursue belief in a deity without fear of repercussion or obstruction. It was founded as a country in which belief in deity trumps secular government interests, such as “neighborhood character” and car trips—two local obsessions that appear as flotsam when contrasted with the intellectual integrity of First Amendment liberties.
In a 1785 letter to James Madison regarding the First Amendment, Thomas Jefferson wrote: “It was not, however, to be understood that instruction in religious opinion and duties was meant to be precluded by the public authorities, as indifferent to the interests of society. On the contrary, the relations which exist between man and his Maker, and the duties resulting from those relations, are the most interesting and important to every human being, and the most incumbent on his study and investigation.”
And Jefferson wrote that legislators should not “subdivide property” without valuing “the natural affections of the human mind.”
Our country was founded as a place in which government authority is kept in check by almost everything, including guns, speech, association, media and deference to deity. Constitutional principles have allowed religious pacifists to opt out of wartime drafts, respecting their religious rights above their duties to government. So why do county officials complain when a church—which needs more space to facilitate more people in their beliefs—finds federal protection in opting out of the county’s arbitrary planning practices? If the law elevates religion over mandatory war service, it certainly elevates it over petty concerns about car trips and fussy neighbors.
Thankfully, federal law and the courts care little about Boulder County’s rural character and the community’s neurotic obsession about car trips. It cares much about liberty, and freeing individuals from local authorities who question the validity of one religion over another, as Mayer questioned the value of Rocky Mountain Christian Church. Watch your wallet, because Boulder County will lose this battle in court, possibly costing us millions.
Wayne Laugesen writes from Boulder, Colorado. This article originally appeared in the Boulder Weekly.
