Religion News Service
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, August 21, 2003: A Los Angeles federal judge has agreed to reconsider his earlier ruling that declared parts of the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson had alarmed some lawyers and religious leaders when he ruled in June that the federal law aimed at helping houses of worship overcome land-use disputes violated the constitutional guarantee of equal protection under the law. On Aug. 11 he put his decision on hold and, at the request of attorneys for the Elsinore Christian Center in Lake Elsinore, Calif., agreed to reconsider it, the Los Angeles Times reported. The church sued the city of Lake Elsinore in 2001 after it was denied a conditional-use permit to move into a former grocery store building. Wilson said the church might be able to pursue its case under the commerce clause of the Constitution. If it did that, there would be no need for him to decide about the constitutionality of the religious land use act. Robert H. Tyler, legal counsel to the Alliance Defense Fund, an Arizona-based group representing the church with the Washington-based Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, called Wilson’s latest decision “a major victory at this stage of the litigation.” The judge has delayed a final ruling for four months to give opposing sides of the legal matter time to conduct discovery and depositions. Wilson, who called the three-year-old law “a blunderbuss of a remedy” thought it unfairly prevented local authorities from making legitimate land-use decisions “simply because the aggrieved landowner is a religious actor.” His original decision marked the first time that the law — the basis for dozens of land-use suits currently in the courts across the nation — had been struck down by a federal judge. Enacted in 2000, the law was supported by an unusually wide range of religious groups, from evangelical Christians to Jews and Muslims to Hindus. HPI adds: This is an important legal issue for any Hindu temple in America seeking to buy land, or intending to expand, and should be followed closely by the temple’s lawyer and trustees.