It looks like New York City will be blocked from “dispersing homeless individuals who are sleeping by invitation” on the landing and steps of the Presbyterian Church at Fifth Avenue and 55th Street. At least for a while. For that is the gist of a ruling released this week by two of the appellate judges who ride the Second United States Circuit — Chester Straub and Sonia Sotomayor — and a third judge who pitched in, Richard W. Goldberg. Technically what the three judges did was affirm a preliminary injunction issued by a federal district judge, Lawrence McKenna, an injunction that prevented the city from rousting the homeless people off the church steps. But the result is that at least for a while, the homeless persons are going to get to stay on the church steps.

No doubt are there those who will interpret all this as a victory for religious freedom. Or as a defeat for the cause of order-maintenance. Or as an eyesore. Or as a shame for those stuck on the steps, who might well deserve better. But the thing that really tickled us reading the Second Circuit’s opinion is that the ruling is a victory for the cause of property rights and the battle against onerous regulations. For one of the arguments pressed by the lower court judge, by the two Clinton appointees who sat at the appellate level, by the Presbyterian Church and its lawyers from the likes of the “Urban Justice Center,” the “Partnership for the Homeless,” and the “National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty” was this.

It seems they believe the city could roust anyone it wanted from the public sidewalk and even land immediately adjacent to the public sidewalk, but not from the steps and landings of the church itself. For the steps and landing are the church’s property — p-r-o-p-e-r-t-y — and city intervention on it violates the common law of trespass. Call it the case in which the left discovered property rights. The Church and its retinue of left of center lawyers found themselves countering the argument by New York that the city has “power to enforce minimum standards of habitability for unregulated shelters.” They found themselves countering the city’s argument that the church is violating New York City’s zoning regulations because the shelter is not a permissible use of the church’s property.

Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday that the city will continue to fight the ruling, which is fair enough. The longer the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church and its legal brigade are forced into court defending property rights and protesting the city’s oppressive regulation of property owners, the greater likelihood there is that some of them may come around to the idea that these rights and freedoms should extend not only to freelance, makeshift homeless-shelter operators but to small businesses and manufacturers and homeowners. That may be but a remote possibility. But one can never tell when a religious institution goes to court. Miracles happen.