If you explore the Google mapping around The Rock church in Castle Rock, you can tell exactly what the problem is with the church setting up RVs in its lot for temporary housing. Rich people who surround the church in their fancy houses do not wish to live near poor people in their crappy shelters. I mean, gross.
And the rich people wish to use the guns of local government to keep those poor people out. What’s the point of building an expensive megachurch right in the middle of a high-end HOA (but just outside its boundaries) if you’re just going to let poor people in?
Separation of church and town
The July 19 federal district court decision by Judge Daniel Domenico offers a good run-down of the relevant facts. “Planned Development” zoning “regulations were initially negotiated in 2003 in order to facilitate the annexation of the Church property into the Town of Castle Rock. Though the PD regulations allow the Church to use the property for ‘Church and related uses,’ they do not specifically indicate whether camping in RVs or trailers is allowed on the property.”
On November 10, 2021, the town’s zoning manager sent the church a “notice of zoning violation” for maintaining temporary shelters on church property. The church, citing the Bible, said that caring for the poor falls under “Church and related uses.” Domenico continues: “After some additional back-and-forth between the Church and the Town . . . the Town allegedly agreed that its objections to the Church’s ministry would be resolved if it limited the RVs and trailers in use to two.” Currently the church keeps “an RV and a camping trailer parked on the western edge of the Church’s parking lot.”
Apparently the zoning manager did not believe that any such agreement had been reached, because on September 26, 2022, the manager sent another notice to the church saying that RVs violate the zoning code. After additional meetings, “on September 9, 2023, having reached an impasse, the Town formally charged the Church with zoning violations,” and the church lost an appeal later that year.
After some additional political wrangling, the church filed a federal lawsuit. The church alleged (as Domenico summarizes) “that the Town’s restrictions (1) violated the Church’s rights under RLUIPA [the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act]; (2) violated the Church’s Free Exercise rights under the First Amendment; (3) constituted unlawful retaliation for the Church’s assertion of its Free Exercise rights; and (4) amounted to a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.”
Domenico’s decision pertains, not to the resolution of the broader suit, but to the church’s request for a preliminary injunction protecting the church from legal action while the lawsuit progresses. Domenico granted part of the injunction blocking the town from “interfering with the Church’s operation of its On-Site Temporary Shelter Ministry as to two RVs/trailers on the Church’s Property.”
From a practical standpoint, whether the church keeps two or ten RVs parked out back does not affect anyone else. If we were talking about a lot more shelters than that, maybe neighbors would have a legitimate beef. It’s a big church, so the neighbors can’t even see the poor people around back. Apparently just the thought of being within a short walk of a few poor people is enough to send some people into a tizzy.
Domenico said he didn’t even have to consider First Amendment claims, “because the RLUIPA claim is enough to warrant the requested relief.” So let’s glance at that federal law.
A property rights double standard
Domenico summarizes, “RLUIPA prohibits a municipality from enforcing a ‘land use regulation in a manner that imposes a substantial burden on the religious exercise of . . . a religious assembly or institution, unless the government demonstrates’ the regulation is both ‘in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest’ and ‘the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.'”
That, by itself, is a reasonable protection. Here is the problem: It protects only the rights of religious people, and therefore, by my lights, violates both the First Amendment’s establishment clause and the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause. Religious people have rights, yes, but they do not (or at least should not) have special rights over and above the rights that other people have.
In short, the RLUIPA, as applied to zoning, seems to hold that religious people have substantial property rights, but other people in important respects do not. And that is a problem if we care about equality under the law.
Consider, for example, that the Effective Altruism community is motivated largely by atheistic utilitarian philosophy, not religious doctrine. An EA activist would be more likely to cite John Stuart Mill or Peter Singer than the Bible. If a person or organization motivated by utilitarian philosophy were in the same position of The Rock church in wanting to provide temporary housing to poor people, that person or organization would not be protected by the federal law in question.
In other words, if you are motivated to help the poor by ancient mythology and unprovable supernaturalist beliefs, you get special legal protection. If you are motivated to help the poor for any other reason, well, you get to experience the unmitigated joy of dealing with the town zoning manager’s petty bureaucratic controls.
Such an absurd double standard might tempt the less pious among us to profanity.
Ari Armstrong writes regularly for Complete Colorado and is the author of books about Ayn Rand, Harry Potter, and classical liberalism. He can be reached at ari at ariarmstrong dot com.
