RLUIPA IN DETROIT

The conservative ACLJ announced today that it is taking the city of Inkster, Michigan to court for its restrictions on the use of land that the Emmanuel Apostolic Faith Center bought in 2002. ACLJ is claiming that the zoning restrictions violate the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, which Congress enacted partly in order to counter the Supreme Court's apparent ratcheting back of protections of religious Free Exercise rights (See Employment Division v. Smith [1990] and Boerne v. Flores [1997]). For more discussion of RLIUPA cases, see this page created by the Beckett Fund, another religiously oriented interest group that is litigating in this area.