Agenda - Planning Commission - 12/06/2012

Home

Zoning Bulletin November 10, 2012 I Volume 6 I Issue 21 ary land use approvals from the Town which all related to zoning and land use rather than traditional environmental concerns. Second, in its Town Code, the Town had intertwined the SEQRA process with its zoning regulations. Third, once the review process was underway, the Town focused on zoning issues rather than traditional environmental issues. Finally, the court declined to "endorse a process that would allow a town to evade RLUIPA by what essentially amounts to a re -characterization of its zoning decisions." Having found RLUIPA was applicable to the circumstances here, the court then determined that the Town had violated RLUIPA. The court found that "the Town's actions during the SEQRA process substantially burdened the Church's religious practice" where: the Church's current fa- cilities were inadequate to accommodate its religious practice; and the Town was acting in bad faith and in hostility to the project such that it would not have allowed the Church to build any worship facility and school on the subject property. See also: Westchester Day School v. Village of Mamaroneck, 504 F.3d 338, 226 Ed. Law Rep. 595 (2d Cir. 2007). See also: Sts. Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Church, Inc. v. City of New Berlin, 396 F.3d 895 (7th Cir. 2005). Case Note: No court of appeals had previously addressed whether an environmental quality statute could constitute a zoning law under RLUIPA. In its decision, the court emphasized that in no sense did it "believe that ordinary environmental review considerations are subject to RLUIPA. However, when a statutorily mandated environmental quality review process serves as a vehicle to resolve zoning and land use issues, the decision issued constitutes the imposition of a land use regula- tion as that term is defined in RLUIPA." Case Note: The Church had also alleged that the Town's actions violated its rights under the First (free exercise of religion) and 14th (equal protection) Amendments, as well as New York law. The Second Circuit agreed. The First Amendment generally prohibits government actions that "substantially burden the exercise of sincerely held religious beliefs" unless those actions are narrowly tailored to advance a compelling government interest. Without resolving whether zoning variance decisions challenged under the Free Exercise Clause are subject to strict scrutiny or rational basis review, the court concluded that the Town lacked a rational basis for delaying and denying the Church's project and therefore violated the Church's Free Exercise rights. The Equal Protection Clause has traditionally been applied to governmental clas- sifications that treat certain groups of citizens differently than others. Here, the ©2012 Thomson Reuters 5