By Deacon
Mike Manno, The Wanderer
In 2020 the Catholic Diocese of Lansing,
Michigan, deeded a 40 acre tract of undeveloped wooded land in Genoa Charter
Township, to Catholic Healthcare, Inc. which created a prayer walk through the
woods which contained the fourteen Stations of the Cross, as well as other
religious stations where people could come for quiet outdoor devotion.
The wooded area was similar to the
surrounding area which contained family homes on large acreages. Ironically,
the township owned a similar wooded area of approximately 38 acres on which it
placed a fifteen station Leopold the Lion Reading Trail. The reading trail was a series of signs that
told the story of Leopold, a character in a popular series of children’s books.
Because of the Stations of the Cross,
the township decided to treat the Catholic property as the zoning equivalent of
a church building. That required Catholic Healthcare to submit a zoning
application for a special land use permit to the township for approval.
In that application Catholic Healthcare
was required to provide: A $2,825 application fee; a complete site plan for the
property; four sets of site plans that would comply with the applicable
requirements found in the site plan review, and four copies of an environmental
impact assessment.
In December of 2020, Catholic
Healthcare complied and filed the requested applications. In that application
it also submitted a special land use application for permission to build a
6,000 square-foot adoration chapel which would seat 95 along with a parking lot
for 39 vehicles. The township’s planning commission recommended approval,
stating that the application had gone “above and beyond and addressed all of
the concerns of the planning commission and its consultants.”
The township then denied both
applications and ordered Catholic Healthcare to remove the Stations of the
Cross. Catholic Healthcare ultimately filed suit in federal district court
asking for an injunction against the township which would permit the
re-erection of the Stations. Twice that request was denied by the district
court, by two different judges.
Catholic Healthcare then took its
appeal to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals claiming that the actions of the
township violated the U. S. Constitution, the Religious Land Use and
Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), and the Michigan Constitution.
The local officials then took direct
action against Catholic Healthcare. The Livingston County Road Commission
issued a permit allowing Catholic Healthcare to construct a “field driveway”
but banned it from being used for “organized gatherings.” Then the township
sued Catholic Healthcare in state court over the display of religious items on
the property. It then sought an ex parte order – one in which only the
moving side is heard – often without notice to the other – from which it
received a state court order requiring Catholic Healthcare to remove all
religious displays and banned organized gatherings from the property.
Finally the Sixth Circuit got around
to hearing the case, shortly after a new federal judge appointed by President
Biden finally, after a long delay, released her decision to deny Catholic
Healthcare relief from the actions of the township. The judge said the issue
was not ripe for adjudication.
The Sixth Circuit unanimously replied:
“The district court’s ripeness
determination, in turn, was plainly mistaken.
A claim is unripe when it rests upon contingent future events that may
not occur as anticipated or indeed may not occur at all. In land-use cases, the
necessary event is simply that the government has adopted a definitive position
as to how the regulations at issue apply to the particular land in question.
That has manifestly happened here: the
township has uniformly insisted that the plaintiffs obtain a special land-use
permit for their religious
displays; the township
board has twice
refused to grant
them one, even
when presented with an application limited almost entirely to those displays
… Moreover, those events have inflicted an actual, concrete injury on
plaintiffs because the township has actually forced them to remove the
religious displays from their property.”
Then the court turned to the religious
liberty aspect of the case. It noted that the township carries the burden in
any action involving the claims by Catholic Healthcare that its actions
violated RLUIPA. That statute the court noted says:
“No government shall impose or
implement a land use regulation in a manner that imposes a substantial burden
on the religious exercise of a person, including a religious assembly or
institution, unless the government demonstrates that imposition of the burden
on that person, assembly, or institution: (A) is in furtherance of a compelling
governmental interest; and (B) is the least restrictive means of furthering
that compelling governmental interest.”
That is known as strict scrutiny, the
highest legal bar for cases of this type.
It all went downhill for the township
from there. The court found that all the factors required to be examined for
the entry of a preliminary injunction favored Catholic Healthcare:
“The remaining preliminary-injunction
factors also favor plaintiffs: the forced removal of their religious displays
inflicts an ongoing harm to their religious exercise; the restoration of
those displays would
impose negligible harm
on others; and
the public interest
favors vindications of rights protected under RLUIPA,” the court wrote.
In addition to the majority opinion
there were two concurring opinions. It ordered the religious items that the
township ordered removed, to be replaced within three days.
Now this was a significant victory for
religious liberty, but remember, this was only a ruling on a preliminary injunction
and it did not involve the question of the adoration chapel. But a victory for
this type of injunction indicates that the court sees that the plaintiff, in
this case Catholic Healthcare, is likely to prevail on the merits when the case
moves forward for final proceedings.
Robert Muise, chief counsel for the
American Freedom Law center, who briefed and argued the case in the Sixth
Circuit was on my radio program and said that the township’s attorneys have
notified him that they intend to appeal the case. The appeal from a circuit
panel decision, such as this, can go to the entire Sixth Circuit, which means
that all the judges of that court would be asked to overrule the case.
That is highly unlikely, said Mr.
Muise, since the three-judge panel ruled unanimously which give the other
judges little reason to re-look at it. The other appeal would be directly to
the U. S. Supreme Court where Mr. Muise would relish the argument to make the
legal ruling applicable across the nation.
Mr. Muise’s interview, along with that
of Erick Kaardal on election integrity efforts, can be heard following the link
below. Look for episode 383.
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(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com, and listen to him
every week on Faith On Trial on the Iowa Catholic Radio Network, or https://iowacatholicradio.com/faith-on-trial/).
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