RLUIPA.org
Castle Hills, Texas has "declared war" on church, brief charges
"The City of Castle Hills has declared war on Castle Hills First Baptist Church," a federal court in San Antonio was told today, and "evidence clearly supports a finding that the City harbors discriminatory animus against the Church to a degree that far surpasses the standard required" by the U.S. and Texas Constitutions, as well as state and federal statutes, for a "finding of illegal discrimination." The brief filed by the Church (PDF format, 571K) asks the court to reject the city's motion for partial summary judgment in the case. A cross motion for summary judgement on the Church's behalf will be filed later today.
Castle Hills First Baptist Church filed suit against the city last year after being refused two use permits, one for an additional parking lot, and the other for use of existing 4th floor space for its youth ministry. Last summer, a mediated settlement was reached, but the City Council, under heavy pressure from a clique of opponents led by former Mayor Bob Anderson, rejected it. Last week, the current mayor, Dave Seyfarth, resigned, accusing "a small group of political malcontents who seek to disrupt and hijack every meeting for their own personal political agenda" of fomenting extreme "disharmony" in the city. Anderson, who acknowledged to the San Antonio Express-News that he was the target of Seyfarth's statement, had to be physically removed by Sheriff's deputies for disrupting a city council meeting in September during a discussion of the Castle Hills First Baptist case.
The brief filed today charges that the "excuses provided by the City for its illegal actions range from the deceptive to the phony to the surreal," and that "the City is virulently anti-church." Its actions "are part of the City's broader campaign to drive this Church out of Castle Hills, just as it has driven others out in the past. That campaign is animated by a bizarre combination of madness and malice," and "the City's asserted interests of traffic flow and ‘neighborhood destruction' are pretexts that cloak its purpose of driving the Church out by making its life in Castle Hills intolerable."
The very text of the City's motion for summary judgment makes plain its "irrational fear of the Church," comparing it to "a cancer, feeding on homes in much the same way as a cancerous tumor feeds on healthy cells," and argues that unless the City stops the incremental growth of the Church, "it can devour all of Castle Hills, one bite at a time." Such statements "are unmistakably reprehensible and constitutionally problematic in a nation committed to religious liberty," the Church brief states.
Castle Hills First Baptist is represented in the lawsuit by The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and by local attorneys Stephen Allison and Jeffrey Prince, of the firm of Haynes and Boone.