U.S. District Judge William Osteen Jr. of the Middle District of North Carolina has temporarily halted a decision by the Chatham County Board of Commissioners to reject the rezoning request of The Summit Church, led by former Southern Baptist Convention President J.D. Greear.
Osteen’s ruling was issued on Friday in a memorandum and opinion order in response to a religious discrimination lawsuit filed earlier this year by The Summit Church. The church sought to rezone nearly 100 acres of land to develop its Chapel Hill campus, but the county initially denied the application.
The church requested “preliminary and permanent injunctive relief,” aiming for the court to mandate the county’s approval of the rezoning and site plan, and to “enter a Declaratory Judgment that the County’s denial of Summit Church’s rezoning applications violates RLUIPA, and is therefore void.”
Although Osteen found that “they are entitled to a preliminary prohibitory injunction,” he declined to issue that because “the balance of equities/public interest factor favors” Chatham County “with respect to a preliminary mandatory injunction.”
In his order, Osteen stated, “This court agrees that the public and Plaintiff have a strong interest in religious liberty, which RLUIPA protects.” However, he explained, “Mandatory injunctions are 'highly disfavored,'… and this policy appears especially salient where the requested mandatory injunction would, as here, result in a federal court commanding a local government to affirmatively act in the confines of traditional local control.”
“Further, as Defendant expressed at oral argument, there is significant potential harm associated with issuing the mandatory preliminary injunction Plaintiff seeks, which would require Chatham County to approve Plaintiff’s proposal and permit Plaintiff to begin constructing its church campus. If, at a later date, either before this court or on appeal, Defendant ultimately prevails — the result would be an improperly built or half-built church campus in Chatham County. Such a conundrum would not be in the interest of the County or its residents,” he added.
While denying the church’s request for a mandatory injunction, Judge Osteen granted a prohibitory injunction, stating that “The Summit Church… has shown that it is likely to succeed in proving that the impediment imposed by Chatham County — the denial of its proposal — constituted a 'substantial' burden on its religious exercise.”
He ordered, “Defendant Chatham County, North Carolina Board of Commissioners is hereby ENJOINED from denying Plaintiff’s rezoning proposal, pending further order of this court.”
In April, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a statement of interest supporting The Summit Church’s lawsuit—just two weeks after the Chatham County Board of Commissioners’ lawyers asked the court to dismiss it.
The DOJ backed the church's claim that RLUIPA protects against the county’s discriminatory zoning decision, emphasizing that, since RLUIPA is a federal law, it “guards individuals and religious institutions from unduly burdensome, unequal, or discriminatory land use regulations.”
