RLUIPA.org
CO Court Dismisses Unprecedented Lawsuit Against Church
The Honorable Marcia Krieger of the United States District Court for the District of Colorado dismissed a lawsuit that Boulder County had brought against Rocky Mountain Christian Church (RMCC). The County was seeking a Declaratory Judgement from the court that it had acted lawfully when it denied RMCC a special use permit. RMCC needed the permit to make necessary expansions to engage in religious exercise on its private property. When it denied the permit, the County included instructions to the County's attorney to file the lawsuit against the church. This was an entirely unprecedented move under RLUIPA, a statute that allows churches to sue the government, not the other way around. Judge Krieger explains part of the justification for the dismissal:
"Governmental entities must make difficult and potentially expensive decisions every day. The risk and potential costs of litigation that might result from a contemplated decision are just some of the many factors that play an essential role in the decisionmaking process. Any decisionmaker would certainly relish the opportunity to engineer those factors out of the decision’s calculus, but it is not the obligation of the courts to assist the decisionmaker in doing so, and to thereby assume much of the decisionmaker’s burden."
RMCC has filed a more traditional lawsuit against the County claiming that when Boulder County Officials denied the permit application, their actions were in violation of RLUIPA. The Becket Fund has been advising RMCC in a limited capacity.
Read the decision here.