Opinion ID: 3025336
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Has Lighthouse Placed Evidence in the Record

Text: That Long Branch’s Redevelopment Plan Burdens Its Free Exercise of Religion? The First Amendment prohibits Congress from enacting any laws “respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” U.S. Const. amend. I. The Free Exercise Clause applies to states and local governments through the Fourteenth Amendment. Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 303 (1940). The right to free exercise of religion is “first and foremost, the right to believe and profess whatever religious doctrine one desires.” Smith, 494 U.S. at 877. Because religious exercise often involves conduct, prohibiting that conduct is equivalent to prohibiting the free exercise of religion: 45 the exercise of religion often involves not only belief and profession but the performance of (or abstention from) physical acts: assembling with others for a worship service, participating in sacramental use of bread and wine, proselytizing, abstaining from certain foods or certain modes of transportation. It would be true, we think (though no case of ours has involved the point), that a State would be “prohibiting the free exercise [of religion]” if it sought to ban such acts or abstentions only when they are engaged in for religious reasons, or only because of the religious belief that they display. Id. at 878. However, unlike RLUIPA, which explicitly defines as religious exercise: “The use, building, or conversion of real property for the purpose of religious exercise,” the Free Exercise Clause does not define land use as a religious exercise. Cf. 42 U.S.C. 2000cc-5(7)(B). Indeed, several sister circuits have held that, when the plaintiff does not show that locating its premises in a particular location is important in some way to its religion and the area from which plaintiff’s building is excluded is not large, there is no constitutionally cognizable burden on free exercise. See Grace United Methodist Church v. City of Cheyenne, 451 F.3d 643, 654 (10th Cir. 2006) (inability on the part of a church to open a day care center in a particular district did not constitute “more than an incidental burden on religious conduct”); Messiah Baptist Church v. County of Jefferson, 859 F.2d 820, 824-25 (10th Cir.1988) (“[a] church has no 46 constitutional right to be free from reasonable zoning regulations nor does a church have a constitutional right to build its house of worship where it pleases”; it did not matter that the zoning regulations at issue had the incidental effect of making the church’s exercise of religion more expensive because it was compelled to build elsewhere in the county); Lakewood, Ohio Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses, Inc. v. City of Lakewood, 699 F.2d 303, 306-07 (6th Cir.1983) (where construction of building for worship had no ritualistic significance, a zoning ordinance prohibiting its erection in a residential district did not impose a substantial burden on the exercise of religion); but see Islamic Ctr. of Miss., Inc. v. City of Starkville, 840 F.2d 293, 298-99 (5th Cir. 1988) (enforcement of zoning laws making the only mosque in town relatively inaccessible by believers without cars was an undue burden on religious practice). We join these courts in holding that, when a religious plaintiff makes a Free Exercise challenge to a zoning regulation, it must explain in what way the inability to locate in the specific area affects its religious exercise.17 17 Two other courts have held similarly, but on the basis of an analysis of the magnitude of the burden rather than strictly of its nature. See Christian Gospel Church, Inc. v. City and County of San Francisco, 896 F.2d 1221, 1224 (9th Cir. 1990) (no substantial burden on a church that claimed home worship was part of the tenets of its religion, since it was undisputed that the church, prior to applying for a permit for church use in a residential area, had worshipped in the banquet room of a hotel, and where the ordinance did not prohibit worship in all homes, only in the particular home wished by the church); Grosz v. City 47 Here, Lighthouse has not placed any evidence in the record that the inability to locate its premises at the Property or within the specific zoning district at issue here would negatively affect its ability to practice its religion. Although it states its mission is to minister to the downtown poor, it does not allege a sincerely held religious belief that it must minister within the Broadway Corridor or that the downtown poor are not equally accessible in nearby areas. Indeed, Rev. Brown agreed at his deposition that he “could move four blocks and still serve the population [he was] concerned about.” We emphasize that, in requiring a plaintiff who asserts a Free Exercise challenge to a land-use regulation to articulate a reason why the inability to occupy a particular location is significant to its belief, we remain cognizant of the Supreme Court’s admonition that “courts must not presume to determine the place of a particular belief in a religion . . ..” Smith, 494 U.S. at 887. See also Hernandez v. Comm'r, 490 U.S. 680, 699 (1989) ([i]t is not within the judicial ken to question the centrality of particular beliefs or practices to a faith, or the validity of particular litigants’ interpretations of those creeds.”) While we do not require a plaintiff to show the burden is substantial because we eschew intrusion into the religious of Miami Beach, 721 F.2d 729, 739 (11th Cir.1983) (where plaintiff, head of an Orthodox Jewish sect, could have held prayer meetings in a differently zoned district four blocks from his home, the burden on his right to exercise his religion was “toward the lower end of the spectrum” although it might entail some impact in terms of “convenience, dollars or aesthetics”). 48 realm, we do expect a plaintiff to articulate why it is a burden on its religious exercise (as opposed, for instance, to its pocketbook or its convenience). See Braunfeld v. Brown, 366 U.S. 599, 606-7 (1961) (holding that a Sunday-closing law did not burden the exercise of religion by Orthodox Jewish merchants since “requiring “some financial sacrifice” from believers is not of the same order as making a religious practice unlawful in itself.) This requirement is in line with our holding in DeHart v. Horn, 227 F.3d 47, 51 (3d Cir.2000) (en banc) that the two prerequisites for finding that a religious practice is entitled to protection are that “the beliefs avowed are (1) sincerely held, and (2) religious in nature, in the claimant's scheme of things.” While we do not question that the act of assembling for prayer or worship is religious in nature, we do not assume, without any allegation in this sense on the part of the plaintiff, that obtaining use of the particular property at issue here has any religious significance. This alone would be reason to affirm the District Court’s grant of summary judgment to Long Branch on the Free Exercise claim.