On October 21, Notre Dame Law School’s Lindsay and Matt Moroun Religious Liberty Clinic filed an amicus brief in the Kentucky Supreme Court in support of a Catholic organization’s freedom to use its property for religious exercise. The brief urges the court in Missionaries of Saint John the Baptist v. Frederic to faithfully apply the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, which protects all forms of religious exercise from substantial burdens imposed by government land-use decisions.
The Missionaries of Saint John the Baptist seek to build a shrine to honor the Blessed Virgin Mary. The grotto would be a small replica of the grotto at Lourdes, France, where Mary appeared to Saint Bernadette. In 2021, Saint John applied for a conditional use permit and variances to build the shrine on its property, which already houses a Catholic church known as Our Lady of Lourdes. Although the county zoning board approved Saint John’s application, two neighbors challenged that decision.
After the trial court affirmed the zoning approval, an appellate court reversed. The court rejected Saint John’s argument that RLUIPA prohibits the board from denying Saint John permission to build a grotto. The court acknowledged that the denial would make Saint John’s religious practice “more difficult.” But it nonetheless concluded that the denial did not substantially burden Saint John’s religious exercise in violation of RLUIPA because, in its view, the Missionaries could still be faithful Catholics without a grotto.
As the Clinic’s brief demonstrates, this analysis is plainly mistaken. Protection of religious exercise cannot depend on a court’s own evaluation of the importance, centrality, or necessity of a person’s religious beliefs. This longstanding principle is deeply rooted in the guarantees of the First Amendment’s Religion Clauses. And Congress explicitly codified this foundational precept into RLUIPA, which offers heightened protection for religious exercise in particular contexts in which burdens on religious exercise frequently occur.
Courts sometimes take different approaches to evaluate whether the government’s restriction of a religious exercise has imposed a “substantial burden” within the meaning of RLUIPA. But, as the Clinic’s brief makes clear, the lower court’s decision here was mistaken under any of these approaches.
“RLUIPA’s sweeping protection includes all forms of sincere religious exercise, whether central to that religion or not,” said Meredith Kessler, Staff Attorney for the Lindsay and Matt Moroun Religious Liberty Clinic. “Whether the Catholic faith mandates that Saint John construct a grotto on its property to honor the Blessed Virgin Mary is irrelevant. The Kentucky Supreme Court should reject the lower court’s effort to limit the statute’s scope based on its own view of what exactly the Catholic faith requires.”
Clinic students Veronica Maska, Leo Schlueter, Steven Tu, and Dennis Wieboldt assisted with the brief.
“When Congress passed RLUIPA, it sought to ensure that the law’s protections are not denied based on a court’s own view of the value or importance of religious claimants’ beliefs,” said Wieboldt, a second-year law student and Ph.D. student in history. “The Missionaries of Saint John are entitled to this statutory protection.”
About the Lindsay and Matt Moroun Religious Liberty Clinic
The Lindsay and Matt Moroun Religious Liberty Clinic is a teaching law practice that educates, forms and prepares Notre Dame law students to become the rising generation of religious liberty leaders by training students in the practice of the law as they defend religious freedom for all people.
Under the guidance of law school faculty and staff, students work on a broad variety of legal matters to promote religious freedom on behalf of individuals and organizations of all beliefs—both domestically and abroad. The clinic represents clients from all faith traditions to promote not only the freedom for people to hold religious beliefs but also their fundamental right to express those beliefs and to live according to them. Learn more about the work of the Clinic here.