Fortress Bible Church v. Feiner

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that use of a state environmental law was an “application” of a zoning law under RLUIPA because it was used as a 26 “vehicle for determining the zoning issues related to the Church’s land use proposal”
• finding that a conclusion of no rational basis is “bolstered where . . . the evidence demonstrates that the government’s stated concerns were pretextual”
• requiring that the substantial burden have a “close nexus” with religious 10 exercise to be cognizable under RLUIPA
• observing that locality’s own planning commissioner believed church’s application did not warrant scrutiny under existing environment law, but locality still aggressively applied environmental standards and then “manipulated” the process
• finding that requiring plaintiff to file an additional application was a substantial burden based on evidence of the local government’s “intentional delay, hostility, and bias toward” and “arbitrary and unlawful denial of” the plaintiff’s first application
• finding RLUIPA applied to environmental law in part because it was “intertwined” with locality’s zoning regulation

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).