The Government Is Rigging the Game Against Churches – Now We're Taking It to the Supreme Court

The government is rigging the game against churches – and we’re asking the Supreme Court to stop it. Imagine this: A church wants to build a place of worship. At the same time, a nursery school down the street can locate wherever it wants. A school, a library, a country club – all of them can plant roots in the neighborhood without restriction. But the church? It gets told it can only exist if it sits on an arterial street.

That’s not a hypothetical. That’s exactly what happened to the Missionaries of Saint John the Baptist in Kentucky – and the Kentucky Supreme Court shockingly saw nothing wrong with it.

We do. And we’ve filed an amicus brief asking the United States Supreme Court to take this case and fix it.

The Missionaries of Saint John the Baptist, a Catholic religious organization, sought a conditional-use permit for a place of worship. The local zoning ordinance required churches and religious worship facilities to be located on an arterial street. Sounds neutral enough – until you look at who is exempt from that requirement: nursery schools, libraries, public parks, and country clubs can all obtain conditional-use permits without being on an arterial street.

The church argued this was an obvious violation of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), which Congress passed specifically to stop governments from treating churches like second-class property owners. RLUIPA’s Equal Terms provision is crystal clear: The government cannot treat “a religious assembly or institution on less than equal terms with a nonreligious assembly or institution.”

The Kentucky Supreme Court’s response was essentially this: Some other institutions – hospitals, police stations, universities – are also required to be on arterial streets, so the church was not being singled out.

That logic creates a dangerous slippery slope. Under the Kentucky Supreme Court’s reasoning, a city could treat churches worse than every other use in town except one and still claim it hasn’t violated RLUIPA. As long as a single secular institution faces the same restriction, discrimination against churches is perfectly fine.

That is not what Congress wrote. That is not what RLUIPA means. And the ACLJ is fighting to make sure the Supreme Court says so.

Take action with the ACLJ and defeat the Left’s war against Christians. Sign our petition.

We’ve Seen This Playbook Before

If this sounds familiar, it should. It’s the same playbook we are fighting in our battle against Governor Newsom’s COVID fines against Calvary Chapel San Jose.

When California locked down during the pandemic, Governor Newsom’s restrictions treated churches far more harshly than comparable secular venues. Calvary Chapel San Jose refused to comply, continued holding worship services, and was hit with over $1.2 million in government fines for the audacity of exercising its First Amendment rights. We are taking that case all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States.

The thread connecting Calvary Chapel to the Missionaries of Saint John the Baptist is impossible to miss. In both cases, government officials looked at a church and said: You get less. Less freedom. Less access. Less equal treatment under the law. Whether it’s COVID restrictions or a zoning ordinance, the weapon changes – but the target is always the same.

The Courts Are Watering Down Your Rights

This case is bigger than one church in Kentucky. Lower courts across the country have been quietly gutting RLUIPA’s Equal Terms provision by adding words that Congress never wrote. Phrases like “similarly situated.” Phrases like “as to the regulatory purpose” or “with respect to accepted zoning criteria.”

Those extra requirements – invented by courts out of thin air – have given municipalities a powerful weapon to exclude churches while keeping every other entity they prefer. Zoning authorities have even amended their ordinances mid-litigation to ensure churches lose. Courts have then deferred to those changes.

RLUIPA was passed precisely because local governments were using economic and zoning justifications to drive out tax-exempt churches. The legislative record is explicit: Churches were being denied permits for spaces that other uses freely enjoyed. Congress said: No more.

The ACLJ Is Not Backing Down

Defending religious institutions from government overreach – whether it’s pandemic fines or discriminatory zoning – is exactly what the ACLJ was founded to do. We have fought RLUIPA battles across the country, standing with churches, mosques, synagogues, and religious schools targeted by governments using their regulatory power as a weapon against faith.

This case at the Supreme Court is the next chapter. The Equal Terms provision must mean what it says: If any nonreligious assembly or institution is treated better than a religious one, that’s an RLUIPA violation. Full stop. No extra qualifiers. No manufactured exceptions. No mid-litigation rewrites.

Take action with the ACLJ and defeat the Left’s war against Christians. Sign our petition.