Pam Bondi’s Civil Rights Division, Turning Its Focus to Religious Liberty, Steps Up To Defend New Hampshire Church

A red barn on a rural road in New Hampshire is the latest battleground for the Justice Department as it shifts the focus of its Civil Rights Division, under the helm of Harmeet Dhillon, to protecting religious liberty.The Justice Department filed a statement of interest in federal district court this week to the small Granite State town of Weare, where a pastor is suing his town and local officials for trying to force him — at threat of substantial fines — to stop holding church services in his barn. The town is requiring the pastor to submit site plan paperwork and win Town Planning Board approval to hold the services, but it doesn’t require such approval for hosting secular events in the same barn.“When localities threaten fines against religious groups to force them to undertake unnecessary land use review, RLUIPA offers them an avenue for relief through the courts,” Ms. Dhillon said in a statement, referencing the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. “The Civil Rights Division stands ready to protect fundamental religious freedom rights of all Americans.”This is not the first RLUIPA case on which the Justice Department has weighed in since President Trump took office. It filed a statement of interest in support of a Christian church in North Carolina last month on similar grounds. The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act is a federal law passed in 2000 — and signed into law by President Clinton — that protects individuals and religious houses of worship from discrimination in zoning and land use laws.President Trump is making religious liberty a signature issue of his second term. He signed an executive order in February on “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias” and established a Religious Liberty Commission on Thursday. Ms. Dhillon says she is shifting the Civil Rights Division away from prosecuting disparate impact cases and is dismissing old civil rights consent decrees in favor of focusing the department’s resources on prosecuting antisemitism on college campuses and protecting religious liberty, women’s sports, and the Second Amendment. The New Hampshire case, Grace New England v. Town of Weare, fits neatly into this purview.Pastor Howard Kaloogian. Caroline McCaughey/The New York Sun.Pastor Howard Kaloogian moved to his home in Weare in 2015 and started hosting secular events in the renovated barn behind his home almost immediately. He has hosted backgammon tournaments, weddings, and political events. He hosted a political rally with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in 2023, drawing a large crowd.The pastor has for the last seven years hosted an annual Americans for Prosperity celebration of the Pine Tree Riot — an early act of resistance by colonists against the British Crown — in his barn. He hosted that event there again this Saturday, drawing 150 people. “In fact, the planning board told us we could do anything we wanted with our barn just so long as we did not run a business out of it, because it’s zoned residential, not commercial,” Mr. Kaloogian tells The New York Sun.Yet when he decided in the summer of 2023 to start hosting church services in his barn on Saturday evenings, a zoning official from the town came knocking. This zoning official, Tom Sawyer, who is a defendant in the case, told Mr. Kaloogian he must stop hosting religious services until he applied for and won a conditional use permit for the property, which Mr. Sawyer said he’d likely be denied.Mr. Sawyer also mentioned in this meeting that he is an atheist, according to court documents, though he said that had no bearing on his actions. “He just started volunteering, ‘well this has nothing to do with my personal beliefs,’” Mr. Kaloogian says of the conversation.A retired attorney and former Republican state assemblyman from California, Mr. Kaloogian knew his rights and the local zoning ordinances, and he refused to comply. Aside from being protected by the First Amendment and RLUIPA, New Hampshire statute 674.76 prohibits local zoning codes or site plan regulations from unduly restricting property used for religious purposes. The New Hampshire constitution also offers similar religious land use protections.Mr. Kaloogian hired an attorney, Jeremy Dys, from the religious liberty law firm First Liberty Institute. Mr. Dys thought sending the town a cease-and-desist letter would settle the matter. It didn’t.The town threatened fines of up to $550 a day until Mr. Kaloogian ceased using the barn as a church. Over the next few months, town officials denied a permit from one of his contractors to install a heater in the barn and sent Mr. Kaloogian a letter demanding he immediately stop “any assembly regarding Grace Church New England,” the name of his church. This is despite the fact that Mr. Kaloogian’s church services attract only about 30 parishioners — a far cry from the crowds at some of his secular events.Mr. Kaloogian sued the town, Mr. Sawyer, and the chairman of the town’s Planning Board Committee, Craig Francisco. His lawsuit contends “the actions of the Town and its officials violate the Church’s rights under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, the New Hampshire Constitution, and New Hampshire Revised Statute 674:76.”Mr. Dys says religious land use cases are more common than one would think. “Towns across the country are sometimes stuck in their own bureaucracy,” he tells the Sun. “My hope is that the Trump administration will simply enforce the First Amendment as the founders intended it to be, and to make sure that religious freedom being the first freedom in our constitution is upheld across the country.”When asked whether Mr. Dys thinks the Weare town employees’ actions are politically motivated or somehow anti-Christian, he demurred. A town with a population of only 9,000, Weare is far from a liberal bastion. The town voted for Mr. Trump in the last election by 60 percent.“My suspicion is that this is less to do with Rs and Ds and much more to do with whatever town administrator or manager is currently in place, having a bit of authority and wishing to exert that authority through bureaucracy,” Mr. Dys says.Pastor Kaloogian’s renovated bard. Caroline McCaughey/The New York Sun.A Republican state representative from Weare, Ross Berry, largely agrees, though he says these local officials are elected in off-years when there is low voter turnout and zoning enforcement has become a contentious issue across the state.“Weare is a super Republican town. It’s literally one of the most conservative towns in New Hampshire,” Mr. Berry says. “I just want the town to leave the guy alone. It’s not a big building, and it’s not like he’s got a massive congregation. Let the guy worship his God.”Mr. Kaloogian told the crowd at the Pine Tree Riot celebration on Saturday that in depositions a town official said this is the first time a property owner has stood up to the zoning board. “Normally we don’t have to enforce our cease and desist order. When we threaten $550 a day, everybody rolls over,” Mr. Kaloogian recalled the official saying.The chairman of Wears’ Board of Selectmen and the town administrator did not return the Sun’s request for comment.The Justice Department’s renewed attention on religious liberty is a welcome one for Mr. Dys and others at his firm. Liberty First Institute’s chief executive, Kelly Shackelford, was appointed to Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission this week. Mr. Dys says the Biden administration’s Civil Rights Division prosecuted religious land use cases, but he’s already seeing “a greater desire to weigh in” from Ms. Dhillon’s Civil Rights Division. “Increased focus is the right word,” Mr. Dys says.Critics of Ms. Dhillon, though, say the shift in departmental priorities and over-focus on anti-Christian bias undermines the Civil Rights Division’s intended purpose. Founded in 1957 following the passage of the Civil Rights Act, the division’s original focus was on protecting black Americans voting rights.“She’s going quite a ways further than certainly I’ve seen under other Republican administrations, which is to say she’s sort of flipping the mission on its head,” a former Civil Rights Division attorney, Aaron Zisser, tells the Sun.Mr. Kaloogian says he just wants to hold church services and events in his barn and be left alone. “I’m sorry that the town has taken this position because I didn’t want to have conflict. I live here. I have a lot of friends here. I’m very involved and engaged in the community,” he says. “The town only had trouble with it when I called it a church.”“We think we’re going to win. If we don’t win we’re going to appeal,” Mr. Kallogian told the crowd on Saturday. He said he wouldn’t mind if the case goes all the way to the Supreme Court.

Pam Bondi’s Civil Rights Division, Turning Its Focus to Religious Liberty, Steps Up To Defend New Hampshire Church

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