Opinion ID: 2585351
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 10

Heading: Accommodation, Advancement and Endorsement

Text: A. The Role of Burden Whatever else may define the scope of accommodation permissible under the Establishment Clause, one requirement is clear: accommodation must lift a discernible burden on the free exercise of religion. ( Lee v. Weisman, supra, 505 U.S. at p. 629, 112 S.Ct. 2649 (cone. opn. of Souter, J.).) Laws accommodating religious freedom have been viewed as having a secular goal for purposes of the Lemon test. (See Corporation of Presiding Bishop, supra, 483 U.S. at p. 335, 107 S.Ct. 2862.) With good reason, Justice O'Connor has declined to embrace this characterization, or the application of the Lemon test to accommodation cases generally. She regards such laws as having a religious purpose and effect but as being nonetheless permissible if they do not go so far as to convey a message of endorsement. (See 483 U.S. at pp. 346-348, 107 S.Ct. 2862 (cone. opn. of O'Connor, J.).) As we shall see below, under either view accommodation justifies exemptions targeted to religious organizations only when the law from which an exemption is made would otherwise interfere significantly with some religious activity. Thus, in Corporation of Presiding Bishop, supra, 483 U.S. 327, 107 S.Ct. 2862, the majority approved an exemption for religious organizations from title VII's prohibition on religious discrimination, on the ground it served to alleviate significant governmental interference with the ability of religious organizations to define and carry out their religious missions. (483 U.S. at p. 335, 107 S.Ct. 2862.) Justice O'Connor, concurring, stressed that in order to perceive the government action as a permissible accommodation of religion, there must in fact be an identifiable burden on the exercise of religion that can be said to be lifted by the government action. ( Id. at p. 348, 107 S.Ct. 2862 (cone, opn. of O'Connor, J.).) She concurred in the judgment because the exemption, designed to lift from religious organizations the burden of refraining from discriminating on the basis of religion, would be perceived by an objective observer . . . as an accommodation of the exercise of religion rather than as a Government endorsement of religion. ( Id. at p. 349, 107 S.Ct. 2862 (cone. opn. of O'Connor, J.) In Wallace v. Jaffree, supra, 472 U.S. 38, 105 S.Ct. 2479, 86 L.Ed.2d 29, conversely, the court struck down a state statute authorizing public schools to have a period of silence for `meditation or voluntary prayer.' ( Id. at pp. 41, 61, 105 S.Ct. 2479.) Rejecting the state's characterization of its law as `a means for accommodating the religious and meditative needs of students,' the majority reasoned that at the time of the statute's enactment there was no governmental practice impeding students from silently praying for one minute at the beginning of each schoolday; thus, there was no need to `accommodate'. . . . ( Id, at p. 58, fn. 45, 105 S.Ct. 2479.) Justice O'Connor concurred here too, agreeing that the statute lifts no state-imposed burden on the free exercise of religion, and accordingly cannot properly be viewed as an accommodation statute. ( Id. at p. 84, 105 S.Ct. 2479 (cone. opn. of O'Connor, J.).) Similarly, in Texas Monthly, the high court held that a sales tax exemption targeted at religious publications violated the establishment clause, in part because the exemption does not remove a demonstrated and possibly grave imposition on religious activity. ( Texas Monthly, supra, 489 U.S. at p. 19, fn. 8, 109 S.Ct. 890 (plur. opn. of Brennan, J.).) The Texas exemption, applicable to periodicals and books promulgating the teachings of a religious faith, and exclusively to such publications, cannot reasonably be seen as removing a significant state-imposed deterrent to the free exercise of religion; in that and other respects, the law conveyed a message of endorsement forbidden under the establishment clause. ( Id. at p. 15, 109 S.Ct. 890.) The high court's holdings, therefore, do not support the view of the majority that absence of a significant burden on free exercise does not matter when government chooses only to grant an exemption from otherwise applicable taxes or regulations. The majority seeks support for its view that exemptions are inherently immune from advancement challenges in Justice White's opinion for the court in Corporation of Presiding Bishop, supra, 483 U.S. 327, 107 S.Ct. 2862, 97 L.Ed.2d 273. Justice White wrote that [f]or a law to have forbidden `effects' under Lemon, it must be fair to say that the government itself has advanced religion through its own activities and influence. ( Id. at p. 337, 107 S.Ct. 2862.) In the case at bench, he continued, we find no persuasive evidence . . . that the Church's ability to propagate its religious doctrine . . . is any greater now than it was prior to the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. ( Ibid. ) Corporation of Presiding Bishop cannot reasonably be read as approving all exemptions favoring religious organizations regardless of whether they actually serve to alleviate substantial burdens on free exercise. There the general law at issue, title VII's prohibition on employment discrimination based on religion, did threaten significant governmental interference with the ability of religious organizations to define and carry out their religious missions ( Corporation of Presiding Bishop, supra, 483 U.S. at p. 335, 107 S.Ct. 2862), and the majority opinion stands for nothing more than that government does not improperly advance religion in seeking to alleviate such interference. To the extent Justice White's opinion nevertheless might be read as establishing a per se rule equating exemptions to permissible accommodations, the court implicitly repudiated it two terms later in Texas Monthly. In that case, religious organizations were no better able to advance their publishing missions after the tax exemption at issue than they were before the sales tax itself was enacted, yet the court declined to characterize the exemption as a mere accommodation of religious freedom, instead finding the exemption impermissibly favored religious publications. ( Texas Monthly, supra, 489 U.S. at p. 15, 109 S.Ct. 890; id. at p. 28, 109 S.Ct. 890 (cone, opn. of Blackmun, J.).) Because, as Justice O'Connor points out, most government assistance to religion could be characterized as a mere accommodation, the test of whether an exemption goes too far cannot be a simply formal one: it cannot be enough to observe that religious organizations granted exemption from an inconvenient or costly general law are no better off than they would have been had the general law not been enacted. Rather than rely on formalism, we must examine a special exemption for religious entities in context to determine whether it is designed and will serve to accommodate free exercise or, instead, to differentially promote and endorse religion or any particular religion. To ascertain whether the statute conveys a message of endorsement, the relevant issue is how it would be perceived by an objective observer, acquainted with the text, legislative history, and implementation of the statute. ( Corporation of Presiding Bishop, supra, 483 U.S. at p. 348, 107 S.Ct. 2862 (cone. opn. of O'Connor, J.).) Crucial to the analysis is whether or not the law was designed to lift a discernable significant burden on free exercise, for, where there is no such burden, the law `provide[s] unjustifiable awards of assistance to religious organizations' and cannot but `conve[y] a message of endorsement' to slighted members of the community. ( Texas Monthly, supra, 489 U.S. at p. 15, 109 S.Ct. 890, quoting Corporation of Presiding Bishop, supra, 483 U.S. at p. 348, 107 S.Ct. 2862 (cone. opn. of O'Connor, J.).) I believe an objective observer would see the statutes at issue here as going well beyond accommodation into the prohibited realm of preferential support and endorsement. B. Landmark Designation and Religious Freedom Sections 37361 and 25373 authorize cities and counties, respectively, to create and apply reasonable land use controls to protect the special character or special historical or aesthetic interest or value of places and buildings. More will be said later in this opinion about the value of preserving landmarks; suffice it here to note that landmark regulation has in common with much zoning and other land use regulation the entirely permissible governmental goal of enhanc[ing] the quality of life by preserving the character and desirable aesthetic features of a city. ( Penn Central Transp. Co. v. New York City (1978) 438 U.S. 104, 129, 98 S.Ct. 2646, 57 L.Ed.2d 631.) Localities' efforts to shape and preserve the physical community through land use regulation do impose costs on property ownersin time, money and lost economic opportunities. As applied to religious individuals and institutions owning property, however, the incidental costs of such broadly applicable regulations have not generally been deemed constitutionally significant burdens on free exercise. Whether assessed under the lenient federal free exercise regime established in Employment Div., Ore. Dept. of Human Res. v. Smith (1990) 494 U.S. 872, 110 S.Ct. 1595, 108 L.Ed.2d 876 ( Smith ), [2] or under more stringent state or pre-Smith federal law, neutral land use regulations that merely add inconvenience or cost to a person's or group's religious practices do not unconstitutionally restrict freedom of religion. As the United States Supreme Court recently explained in City of Boerne v. Flores (1997) 521 U.S. 507, 117 S.Ct. 2157, 138 L.Ed.2d 624, rejecting a free exercise challenge to the impact of landmark restrictions on a church, It is a reality of the modern regulatory state that numerous state laws, such as the zoning regulations at issue here, impose a substantial burden on a large class of individuals. When the exercise of religion has been burdened in an incidental way by a law of general application, it does not follow that the persons affected have been burdened any more than other citizens, let alone burdened because of their religious beliefs. ( Id, at p. 535, 117 S.Ct. 2157.) [3] City of Boerne, and the other cases cited in footnote 3, fit the general pattern, apparent even under pre-Smith law, of high court decisions holding that religion-neutral government regulations that incidentally burden religious individuals or groups by making their practices more costly or inconvenient do not thereby infringe adherents' freedom of religion. [4] I recognize that `[t]he limits of permissible state accommodation to religion are by no means co-extensive with the noninterference mandated by the Free Exercise Clause.' ( Corporation of Presiding Bishop, supra, 483 U.S. at p. 334, 107 S.Ct. 2862, quoting Walz v. Tax Commission, supra, 397 U.S. at p. 673, 90 S.Ct. 1409.) That religious individuals and groups may generally be required to bear the economic cost and inconvenience of compliance with neutral laws without violation of the free exercise clause does not necessarily imply that no relief from such costs is permissible under the establishment clause. Nonetheless, the two are related; the absence of even an arguably substantial burden on religious practices eliminates the chief justification for targeted religious exemptions. As one noted scholar of the religion clauses, George Washington University's Ira Lupu, has written, One of the strongest arguments for permissive accommodations is that they might be mandatory after all. In a world with no mandatory accommodations [i.e., after Smith ], this argument disappears. Government may burden religion incidentally, and may, by way of exemptions, seek to lift such a burden; as long as such burdens do not violate the Constitution, however, the case for lifting them from religious entities but not from those engaged in counterpart secular activity remains hard to fathom. (Lupu, The Trouble with Accommodation (1992) 60 Geo. Wash. L.Rev. 743, 771, fn. omitted.) Where a neutral law, such as a landmark regulation, imposes costs on a variety of individuals and organizations, but the costs to religious adherents do not rise to a level even arguably cognizable under free exercise principles, a legislative decision to target relief solely to religious adherents becomes difficult to justify as an accommodation of religious liberty. [5] If the incidental costs of compliance with land use laws, including landmark restrictions, do not generally constitute substantial interference with free exercise justifying specially targeted exemptions, are there nonetheless some costs or impacts from landmarking that do threaten free exercise and call for accommodation? Courts and commentators agree that such conflicts between landmark laws and free exercise can occur, but the occasions are limited to a few types of circumstances and, in practice, have proven rare. First, application of a landmark regulation to control the arrangement or appearance of the interior of a house of worship, or exterior features with religious significance, poses a significant threat of government interference in religious practices. (See Society of Jesus v. Boston Landmarks (1990) 409 Mass. 38, 564 N.E.2d 571, 573 [designation of church interior held impermissible restraint on freedom of worship under state Constitution].) Second, a significant burden would exist [w]here a church can prove that unyielding enforcement of a landmark ordinance will result in a forced cessation of religious worship and practice in the landmarked building. . . . (Weinstein, The Myth of Ministry vs. Mortar: A Legal and Policy Analysis of Landmark Designation of Religious Institutions (1992) 65 Temp. L.Rev. 91, 151 (hereafter Weinstein); see St. Bartholomew's Church v. City of New York, supra, 914 F.2d at pp. 355-356 [suggesting landmark restriction that prevented church from continu[ing] its religious practice in its existing facilities would be impermissible burden].) Beyond these areas, however, the incidental costs and physical restrictions on repair and maintenance of property exteriors, the administrative cost and inconvenience of complying with landmark regulation, and the opportunity cost imposed by restraints on demolition of landmarked properties for commercial redevelopment are not constitutionally significant burdens on religious freedom. (Weinstein, supra, 65 Temp. L.Rev. at pp. 148-152; Nunez & Sidman, California's Statutory Exemption for Religious Properties from Landmark Ordinances: A Constitutional and Policy Analysis (1995-1996) 12 J.L. & Religion 271, 289-290 (hereafter Nunez & Sidman); see St. Bartholomew's Church v. City of New York, supra, 914 F.2d at p. 355 [opportunity cost not constitutionally significant]; Open Door Baptist Church v. Clark County, supra, 995 P.2d at pp. 42-3 [same as to application fee for conditional use permit].) In Weinstein's summary, [i]t seems clear that interior designation, and exterior designation that would constrain the `theological aspects of building design' or have the effect of forcing a church to cease religious worship at a given site because of physical or financial exigency, would constitute a burden. Conversely, the denial of permission for commercial development would not appear to constitute a burden. (Weinstein, supra, 65 Temp. L.Rev. at p. 148.) Actual conflicts between religious practice and landmark restrictions arise infrequently. One survey of the reported cases of asserted conflict found that most controversies involving historic preservation and religious organizations have little to do with the free exercise of religious beliefs. Instead, the arguments raised by religious institutions as property owners are more aptly viewed as secular in nature. For example, these owners often argue that existing facilities need expansion, maintenance and repair costs are too high, local land use regulation interferes with the opportunity to attain the `highest and best' (i.e., most profitable) use of the property, government red-tape is too burdensome, or the need for additional parking requires the demolition of adjacent buildings. All of these arguments are directly analogous to arguments raised by secular property owners in land use disputes, and are generally rejected by the courts. (Nelson, Remove Not the Ancient Landmark: Legal Protection for Historic Religious Properties in an Age of Religious Freedom Legislation (1999) 21 Cardozo L.Rev. 721, 729-730, fns. omitted.) Not surprisingly, in light of both the rarity of situations in which landmarking actually restricts religious freedom and the flexibility built into most landmark laws, even cities with large numbers of landmarked religious buildings have seen few conflicts that could not readily be resolved administratively. In Philadelphia, with 139 landmarked religious properties, a 1989 study found religious institutions had applied for 127 building permits under the landmark ordinance's standards. Only one was denied, and that application was subsequently withdrawn. Most of the 126 approvals came within one week of application. (Weinstein, supra, 65 Temp. L.Rev. at p. 111.) In New York City, with 211 religious institutions designated as landmarks or in historic districts, a 1991 study found all but nine of 423 applications for permits were approved. Two were partially approved, and two more were resolved by approval of subsequent proposals. ( Id. at p. 112.) With this background understanding of the limited constitutional conflict between landmark laws and religious freedom, we can examine the text and history of the California exemption to see if it is designed as a reasonable accommodation of religion or as an unjustified and preferential benefit to religious organizations. C. Text and History of California's Religious Entities Exemption Section 25373(d) provides that counties' authority to control the use and appearance of historic properties, granted in subdivision (b) of the same section, shall not apply to noncommercial property owned by any association or corporation that is religiously affiliated and not organized for private profit, whether the corporation is organized as a religious corporation, or as a public benefit corporation, provided that both of the following occur: [¶] (1) The association or corporation objects to the application of the subdivision to its property. [¶] (2) The association or corporation determines in a public forum that it will suffer substantial hardship, which is likely to deprive the association or corporation of economic return on its property, the reasonable use of its property, or the appropriate use of its property in the furtherance of its religious mission, if the application is approved. Section 37361(c) places the same restriction on cities' historic preservation authority. Although the statutes require a self-determination of hardship to be made in a public forum, the nature of that forum is not further specified. (§§ 25373(d)(2), 37361(c)(2).) No application for exemption need be made to a governmental body. Nor does either statute provide for any governmental or judicial review of the religious entity's hardship declaration; indeed, both statutes expressly disavow any authorization for local legislative bodies to override the determination made pursuant to paragraph (2). (Gov.Code, §§ 25373, subd. (e), 37361, subd. (d).) The laws, therefore, must realistically be seen as blanket exemptions for noncommercial properties owned by religious entities or, more precisely, as blanket grants to such organizations of the power to exempt their own noncommercial properties from local historic preservation regulations. [6] Neither statute defines noncommercial, but the opposite term, commercial, is a familiar one in land use law. As commonly employed in zoning regulations, commercial denotes a category of real property use, standing in distinction to such other common use zones as residential, industrial, and agricultural. (See, e.g., Williams, Cal. Zoning Practice (Cont.Ed.Bar 2000 supp.) §§ 6.2-6.3, pp. 287-295 [zone definition charts for the City of Los Angeles].) Noncommercial property would thus appear to include property used for residential (including multipleunit rentals), industrial, and agricultural purposes. Moreover, while the property must be owned by a religiously affiliated entity, nothing in the statutes requires that it be in use by the organization; nor do the statutes exclude property leased to others. The exemption could therefore be applied to property owned by a church but leased to a nonreligious individual or corporation for industrial or residential use. Whether or not the property is being used for worship or other religious practices at the time of the self-declared exemption, nothing in the statutes requires that it be so used after exemption, or even that it remain in the religious entity's ownership. Under sections 25373(d) and 37361(c), then, a religiously affiliated organization could, for example, declare exempt a historic building still suitable for and in use as a house of worship, tear it down, and build a modern office building for sale on the commercial market. Finally, even when the building is in use for worship or other religious practice, and the organization intends to continue that use, the statutes call for only an unreviewable declaration of economic impact. Thus, the exemption could be invoked where application of the landmark regulation would impose only incidental costs and inconvenience on the religious entity and would not prevent the property's continued religious use. Under sections 25373(d) and 37361(c), a religiously affiliated organization that simply did not want to go through the permit process to make minor changes to a building, or wished to save some money by using inexpensive but anachronistic materials to rebuild an exterior feature, could exempt itself from the landmark regulation process despite the lack of any demonstrable threat to freedom of religion. The permanent provisions in sections 25373 and 37361 allowing religious entities self-exemption were added in 1994, by Assembly Bill No. 133 (1993-1994 Reg. Sess.). (Stats.1994, ch. 1199, §§ 1, 2 (Assem. Bill No. 133).) The history of these amendments bears out what the text indicates, that they were designed to favor religious organizations with regulatory relief much broader than necessary for protection of religious freedom. The Archdiocese of San Francisco, as part of a cost-cutting move, planned to close nine parish churches. (Nunez & Sidman, supra, 12 J.L. & Religion at p. 275.) The archdiocese, facing millions of dollars in seismic retrofitting costs as well as declining attendance in some parish churches, had systematically evaluated the market value and highest and best use of its properties, and decided on a consolidation plan. (Fernandez et al., Church for Sale?, S.F. Examiner (Aug. 3, 1995) p. Al.) However, the archbishop's controversial plan to consolidate the city's 54 parishes . . . sparked a firestorm of protest in churches across the city (Lattin, Altars in Escrow, S.F. Chronicle (Mar. 2, 1997) p. 1) and `arous[ed] preservationists' fears that [the churches might] be sold, demolished, or remodeled' (Comment, Holy War: In the Name of Religious Freedom, California Exempts Churches from Historic Preservation (1996) 37 Santa Clara L.Rev. 213, 229, fn. omitted). In response to the San Francisco Catholic Archbishop's desire to close and demolish churches, [Assembly] Speaker [Willie] Brown amended AB 133 . . . so that cities and counties could not apply special conditions or regulations to protect historic properties owned by religious organizations. (Assem. Com. on Local Gov., Concurrence in Sen. Amends., Assem. Bill No. 133 (1993-1994 Reg. Sess.) as amended Aug. 26, 1994, p. 2.) The bill thus had its genesis in a specific conflict between the San Francisco Catholic Archdiocese, and parishioners and preservationists in San Francisco, although ultimately wider support came from a number of San Francisco churches and church groups from around the state, and wider opposition from an array of historic preservation organizations and local governments. (Sen. Rules Com., Off. of Sen. Floor Analyses, 3d reading analysis of Assem. Bill No. 133 (1993-1994 Reg. Sess.) as amended Aug. 26, 1994, pp. 2-3.) [7] As this history and the law's text show, the amendments to sections 25373 and 37361 were designed to do much more than protect religious adherents' right to worship and practice their religions as they choose in historic buildings, or to remodel the interior of such structures for a different use, retrofit historic buildings for earthquake safety, or abandon historic houses of worship that, for physical or financial reasons, can no longer be used for that purpose. (Indeed, San Francisco's landmark ordinance does not restrict alterations to the interiors of privately owned structures or prohibit the demolition of landmarked properties; nor is any special approval required for ordinary maintenance and repairs, or for work needed to comply with seismic retrofit regulations, or for work needed to correct an unsafe condition. (S.F. Planning Code, §§ 1005, subd. (e)(2)-(4), 1006.6, subd. (b), 1007.) [8] Rather, the amendments' design and effect were to award religious organizations the unique ability to manipulate their property holdings without regard for landmark regulations, by altering, demolishing, and selling properties, if they choose, for maximum economic benefit and without the incidental cost and delay attendant on obtaining special permits. D. Unrestricted Self-exemption Is Not a Reasonable Measure for Accommodation of Religious Freedom [E]nactments that attempt wholly to exempt churches from landmark regulationssuch as owner consent provisions [or] barring designation of churches . . .  would fail an Establishment Clause challenge because they are not permissible accommodations of free exercise, but rather unconstitutional attempts to benefit religious institutions over secular institutions that are similarly situated. By contrast, legislative enactments that accommodate core religious values, such as exemption from interior designation and hardship provisions for nonprofit institutions generally, would pass constitutional muster. (Weinstein, supra, 65 Temp. L.Rev. at p. 157, fn. omitted.) The Legislature could have responded to the San Francisco controversy over church closings, and any similar problems in other cities, by requiring that all local landmark laws have hardship provisions permitting approval for alteration of a historic building when necessary to continued use or rehabilitation. (See, e.g., San Jose Mun. Code, § 13.48.260 [permit for noncomplying work may be issued if denial would cause immediate and substantial hardship on the applicant because rehabilitation in accordance with the chapter is infeasible from a technical, mechanical, or structural standpoint, or if the economics of rehabilitation in accordance with this chapter would require an unreasonable expenditure in light of the feasible uses of such property]; Berkeley Mun.Code, § 3.24.270 [same, if the applicant presents clear and convincing evidence to the commission that such disapproval will work immediate and substantial hardship because of conditions peculiar to the particular structure or feature involved, and that failure to disapprove the application will be consistent with the purposes of this chapter].) Alternatively, the Legislature might have mandated a hardship exemption particularly tailored to religious and charitable institutions. Columbus, Ohio, for example, provides relief to any nonprofit organization that can show it is infeasible to financially or physically achieve its charitable purposes while conforming to the pertinent architectural standards and guidelines. (Columbus City Code, tit. 31, ch. 3116.16, subd. (3) (enacted 1989), quoted in Weinstein, supra, 65 Temp. L.Rev. at p. 105 [also discussing targeted hardship provisions in both New York City and Buffalo, New York, landmark ordinances].) Instead, the Legislature created an exemption for religious organizations only, and made the exemption available through the organization's own, unreviewable, declaration of hardship. Self-exemption was not necessary either to protect religious freedom, as we have seen, or to guard against government entanglement in religious affairs in the permit process itself. A true hardship exemption, available on application and based on reviewable agency findings, would not involve the administering agency in any intrusive inquiry into religious affairs or otherwise entangle the local government in religion; the question before the planning commission or other board deciding such an application is not whether the organization's use of the property is truly religiousthat should be left to the sincerely held tenets of the organization itselfbut only whether the physical and economic circumstances justify a variance from the ordinary requirements of historic preservation. [9] Not only is self-exemption unjustified by any need to prevent government interference with religious affairs, but by effectively abdicating exercise of a government function and delegating it to a private religious group, the self-exemption feature of sections 25373(d) and 37361(c) actually tends to create a forbidden `fusion of governmental and religious functions.' Board of Ed. of Kiryas Joel Village School Dist. v. Grumet, supra, 512 U.S. at p. 702, 114 S.Ct. 2481.) As with New York's delegation of school district powers to a religious group, held unconstitutional in Grumet, here the state has effectively placed the government power to determine applicability of land use laws in the hands of groups chosen according to a religious criterion. ( Id. at p. 698, 114 S.Ct. 2481.) Like Massachusetts's delegation to churches of veto power over nearby liquor licenses, held unconstitutional in Larkin v. Grendel's Den, Inc. (1982) 459 U.S. 116, 103 S.Ct. 505, 74 L.Ed.2d 297, our self-exemption provision substitutes the unilateral and absolute power of a church for the reasoned decisionmaking of a public legislative body acting on evidence and guided by standards, on issues with significant economic and political implications. ( Id. at p. 127, 103 S.Ct. 505.) An unnecessary blanket exemption for religious property owners from the constraints of landmark regulation, moreover, actually promotes the missions of religious organizations relative to the sometimes competing missions of secular educational and persuasive organizations. Exempting religious institutions from landmark designation creates the potential for significantly advancing religious ideas over competing secular ideas. If St. Bart's [the plaintiff church in St. Bartholomew's Church v. City of New York, supra, 914 F.2d 348] is free to reap millions of dollars from the commercial development of its property and then apply those funds to support its religious and charitable programs, but secular charitable institutions must comply with the landmark ordinance and so are denied access to funds derived from property development, then religious institutions and their ideas are given a significant advantage by government action. Denying government the right to prefer religion over secularism lies at the core of the Lemon test. . . . (Weinstein, supra, 65 Temp. L.Rev. at p. 157, fn. 405.) An objective observer familiar with the text, history, and social context of the self-exemption power granted in sections 25373(d) and 37361(c) would thus perceive it not as a reasonable attempt to prevent local government interference in religious affairs or to lift a significant burden on religious liberty, but as the unjustifiably broad award, to religiously affiliated property owners, of a unique and valuable privilegethe privilege of determining their own properties' subjection to generally applicable land use laws. Such favoritism in the political distribution of valuable privileges cannot but `conve[y] a message of endorsement' to slighted members of the community. ( Texas Monthly, supra, 489 U.S. at p. 15, 109 S.Ct. 890.) The state's relative endorsement of religious organizations' missions is impermissible because it sends the ancillary message to . . . nonadherents `that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message to adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political community.' ( Santa Fe Independent School Dist. v. Doe (2000) 530 U.S. 290, 309-310, 120 S.Ct. 2266, 2279, 147 L.Ed.2d 295.) [10]