A Permit To Pray? When Zoning Masks Religious Discrimination

A major First Amendment religious protections case will be before the Supreme Court this fall. It concerns an Orthodox Jew at a Cleveland suburb, University Heights, who sought to hold prayer gatherings in his home.Daniel Grand is suing the city, the former mayor, Michael Dylan Brennan, and other former and current city employees after being ordered to desist from hosting prayer services in his home without a permit.In 2021, Mr. Grand built a spacious recreation room as an addition to his house, and then reached out to a dozen or so fellow Orthodox Jews by email to see if they were interested in attending services — known as a minyan, a “quorum” of ten Jewish men — in his home. “Because driving is prohibited on the Sabbath and High Holidays,” Mr. Grand’s lawyers contended in their appeal to the Supreme Court, “traveling to and from synagogues is difficult” for Mr. Grand and his family.A neighbor who became aware of the email contacted the mayor at the time, who, Mr. Grand claims, called him on January 21 of that year, before any services had been held in his home, and told the resident that he was not permitted to hold any religious gatherings there without first obtaining a special-use permit, under Chapter 1274 of the University Heights Zoning Code. The city then sent Mr. Grand an official cease-and-desist order barring him from using the property for religious purposes. Officials asserted that the gatherings violated zoning laws and amounted to operating a synagogue in a residential area. The city, Mr. Grand says, also threatened him with criminal prosecution.According to Mr. Grand, Mr. Brennan publicly encouraged residents to monitor the Jewish man’s home and report any sign of worship. According to the lawsuit, one neighbor set up cameras aimed directly at the house, local police began regular patrols around the property, the city delayed occupancy approval and tax benefits, and garbage workers deliberately skipped his home on collection days.What’s more, the lawsuit claims, neighbors registered their objection to the planned services in letters to the city. One read: “I am not Jewish and I do not want our neighborhood to be labeled Jewish.”Mr. Grand applied for a special permit but, when he discovered that if it were approved he would no longer be allowed to use the property as a residence, withdrew the application and filed a federal lawsuit.City officials seem to have balked at the fact that Mr. Grand had described the space in his home as a “shul,” a term that could be understood to mean a synagogue or a small prayer gathering, his lawyers say in their high court appeal. Yet Mr. Grant made clear that he did “not wish to operate a house of worship” as the term “is defined under the zoning ordinance, in the privacy of my home,” University Heights concedes in its response to the court.On September 30, 2024, a federal court in the Northern Ohio district ruled in favor of University Heights, accepting the city’s argument that Mr. Grand had understated the size of the planned gatherings and that the proposed use would create traffic, fire safety and parking problems. The Sixth Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals upheld that ruling on November 13, 2025.The courts found that Mr. Grand’s claims under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, the First and Fourteenth Amendments, and the Ohio Constitution were “unripe” because he withdrew his application before any final decision was made by the city’s zoning authorities, and thus there was no concrete dispute for federal review.Mr. Grand asked the Supreme Court to hear the case and it has agreed to do so.The primary legal issue that the High Court will be deciding is whether a city’s immediate threat of criminal enforcement, like that which was aimed at Mr. Grand, “chills” a person’s constitutional rights enough to justify an immediate lawsuit, or if, as the defendants argue, Mr. Grand had to complete the local zoning permit process first.The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, which Mr. Grand invoked in his failed bids before lower courts, is a federal law designed to prevent municipal zoning boards from using land-use laws to discriminate against religious groups. The law prohibits boards from placing a “substantial burden” on the free exercise of religion without a compelling government reason. The federal law also prohibits governments from treating religious assemblies less favorably than secular ones. The High Court will thus also be weighing whether University Heights applied a double standard by permitting non-religious residential gatherings, like book clubs or watch parties, while banning his minyan.Mr. Grand was not attempting to build a synagogue, just a space where he and his friends could pray together. Yet his predicament speaks to the larger issue of local zoning being used as a means of anti-religious discrimination.There have been a number of cases over recent years where municipalities have faced accusations of using zoning laws to prevent Orthodox Jews from establishing synagogues. The New Jersey city of Clifton and the township of Jackson attempted zoning discrimination and eventually lost lawsuits. Tom’s River, another New Jersey town, was fined last year for ignoring court orders to hand over documents in a lawsuit alleging that it used zoning rules to stop Orthodox Jewish groups from building synagogues.The city of Linden, New Jersey has also been the focal point of state and federal discrimination investigations. So have a number of upstate New York municipalities, which have faced lawsuits from Orthodox Jewish individuals, developers, and the Department of Justice alleging zoning and housing discrimination.Although the legal issues concerning Mr. Grand’s case differ from those of those earlier ones, what they all have in common is the concern of bias against Jews. The Justices, of course, will be ruling only on the legalities of the case, and will have to do their best to ignore the fact that Jewish individuals and institutions have been victims of not only discrimination but hate crimes and violence over recent years. Orthodox Jewish groups (including Agudath Israel of America, for which I worked before retiring last year) and an array of groups, including the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the General Council of the Assemblies of God, and the Islam & Religious Freedom Action Team all filed amicus curiae briefs urging the high court to accept the case.And are presumably gratified that Mr. Grand will have his day in the country’s highest court.

A Permit To Pray? When Zoning Masks Religious Discrimination

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