Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act

So they're focusing on long-term affordable housing.

Since faith-based organizations own thousands of acres on developable—I can't say that word—developable property, churches are leveraging federal religious land use and Institutionalized Persons Act— to bypass local zoning restrictions, and to build tiny home villages.

You know that I love tiny home villages.

All right, we're going to stop here.

Now, you can find rent for $2,000 a month, but people living on a very fixed income can't afford $2,000 a month.

So how do you fix that? How do churches partner with other organizations and how do they fix that? Well, this is brilliant.

They're leveraging the Federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act to bypass local zoning restrictions and to build tiny home villages or multifamily complexes.

This is brilliant.

But we do, and we have one.

RELUPA, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.

RELUPA was passed and signed into law by President Clinton more than 25 years ago.

However, over the years, courts have weakened and confused the law's promised protections.

And Hiram, I thought I'd come to you because First Liberty and some other law firms are representing this particular case out of Kentucky today.

And again, you would think that you wouldn't need a law to actually protect the right of a church or other houses of worship to use their facilities for religious purposes.

The good news is there's one called RELUPA, which is actually Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.

And this is a case which actually the Supreme Court has never had a chance to interpret, but this is just a good example of why you exist and why we're so thrilled that there's an alliance defending freedom and a First Liberty Institute because you're able to defend these individuals that simply want to have a quiet place for prayer and reflection, but apparently people want to use the zoning laws against them.

So see, here's what happens.

When you give Islam, which is, um, a philosophy in my book, not a religion, when you give it First Amendment protection as religion, then they can use federal law such as RLUIPA, the Religious Land Use Institutional Protection Act, I probably botched that, to come in and force mosques in, force Islamic centers in, all in the name of religion.

And we have to understand that it is not that because it, it, it forces subjugation by death to the infidels.

Christianity doesn't do that.

But David, this is the one I thought you'd be really into, Missionaries of Saint John the Baptist versus Frederick.

This is a RLUIPA case.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, pretty exciting stuff, right? So this is the idea that Congress enacted RLUIPA in 2000 to expand religious freedom protections for prisoners and religious organizations, um, or individuals challenging zoning laws.

Here, the church acquired some property next door to it, wanted to build a shrine to the Virgin Mary, um, and long story short, the zoning board and the Kentucky Supreme Court was like, "No, thank you.

You can build a smaller version of your shrine on a different part of your property.

On the other hand, as the petition pointed out, there were exceptions for, like, golf courses, um, but there weren't exceptions for churches.

But there were-- the churches weren't treated-- Like, there were other places treated like the churches.

Well, last week, the court agreed to take up another case that deals with a 26-year-old federal law that protects religious land uses from restrictive zoning and land use laws.

It's called the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, RLUIPA.

Not one of the smoother-sounding acronyms.

[laughs]