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Holy rollers: Court says religious group's proposed RV park exempt from zoning because it would serve a religious purpose
By adamg on Wed, 06/07/2023 - 12:46pm
The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that a Berkshire town and a Land Court judge erred in rejecting a religious group's attempt to build an RV camping area because people who would park there either have to attend religious activities there or work for the group - making it exempt from zoning restrictions under state law.
Hume Lake Christian Camps, which organizes a series of religious activities, including a youth camp, on a 400-acre parcel in the Berkshires hamlet of Monterey, wanted to add a 12-space RV campground for both participants in its programs and for volunteers and staffers at the camp.
But the town denied the necessary approval, saying RV spaces were not covered under a state law that exempts religious and educational facilities from local zoning control. Hume Lakes, founded in California in 1946 to "evangelize the world," sued. A Land Court judge agreed with the group that the spaces set aside for families with kids to attend summer camp were, in fact, "religious" in nature and so exempt from the need to win local permission, but that the spaces meant for people working at the camp were there for a primarily "financial" reason, rather than a religious one, and so the town could say no spaces for them.
In its ruling today, the state's highest court overturned that decision and said the entire RV campground had a religious purpose and so Hume Lake could build it.
The court acknowledged that not everything a religious group or church does is automatically exempt from zoning - as it ruled in a 2017 case involving an Attleboro shrine that sought an abatement on the value of a welcome center run by the Massachusetts Audubon Society on some land the shrine had granted the non-religious group an easement for use as a wildlife sanctuary.
But, the court continued, the spaces set aside for volunteers and summer staffers are directly part of Hume Lake's religious activities.
Seasonal staff at Hume NE, a category that includes camp counsellors, kitchen staff, and grounds people, perform work that is necessary to the camp's operations. ...
Because [the Monterey site] exists to advance Hume's religious mission, it follows that the purpose of housing volunteers and seasonal workers at the RV camp is a religiously significant goal. ... A religious organization may depend upon secular tasks, such as the provision of food and housing, in order to operate effectively.
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Comments
Naive question
Why are there ANY "religious exemptions" to zoning restrictions? It's not as if religious RVs have a different impact than secular RVs.
It's an interesting situation
Vaguely separation of church and state.
However, they are not exempt from other requirements including inspections associated with a campground operation under occupancy permits, as well as proper water and sewer (or dump station) facilities.
So religious exemptions are not absolute.
Any buildings on the site would also still have to maintain proper fire code inspections, health inspections (for food preparation), and building safe occupancy limitations.
In this case the town was following standard zoning without considering the religious aspect which the high court allowed.
So this was not a get-out-of-jail card to do what ever they wanted.
Religious exemptions
do not separate Church and State, they conjoin them, because they put the State in the position of deciding what constitutes a valid religious purpose, as the Supreme Judicial Court is doing here.
Then appeal
Courts cannot be arbiters of what is and what is not a valid religious practice. The MA courts tried to do that with the case the pari-mutuel workers filed against the race track over Christmas as a day off and not being forced to work on that day. That was a decent 10 or more years back at least. The lower courts brought in a priest to testify that Christmas observances could have exemptions and the lower court ruled in favor of the race track. However, the SJC vacated that because the court was ruling on what is and what is not a valid religious practice.
The SJC ruled that one need only hold a specific religious practice as important to qualify for religious exemptions. The exemption is not necessarily tied to the liturgy or canons of a published church practices. Sounds far reaching but freedom of religion is not limited to just those that are published with a liturgy and canons. That was written out due to one having to be a member of a church to have station in some of the colonies and later the states when forming.
In this case the town limits camping and RV sites but the plan would advance the property's religious practice, be it broadly interpreted. And that is how most all religious freedom cases are handled with the exception of "a state's compelling interest" which is usually associated with health and safety and dealing with other defined illegal infractions on the books.
In this case no laws were broken, and the court ruled broadly on the accommodation of religion.
However, as the OP noted, they are still bound by safety laws and will have to pass various campground-like inspections. They will not be allowed to just plop a trailer anywhere and set up shop.
We might argue endlessly on whether there should be any exemptions for religion to begin with but for now that is written into the Constitution, and given the current climate and proliferation of zealots in government, I do not see that changing in our lifetime. When the nation was founded, that was deemed a true necessity to assure this would not be a theocracy with each state in a religious war with the other over dogma. Look at the middle east and you see how that is not working.
And yet...
And yet they got exempted from all the zoning requirements that would have prevented anyone else from establishing an RV park, because religion. So again, why? If there's a reason to regulate the creation of RV parks, how does religion change that?
Once again, religion and specifically Christianity getting a pass from the rules that apply to everyone else.
Because
Zoning and other laws can be abused to restrict legitimate religious purposes.
Don't want a convent or monastery in your city or town? Prohibit any dwellings from housing more than two or three unmarried people. Don't want a mosque? Tailor the zoning laws to prohibit anything that looks like a minaret.
Swing and a miss
This isn't an abuse of zoning, Scotty, it's an enforcement of zoning regulations that apply to everyone else. Why should a religious organization get a pass?
That wasn't your statement.
You said, 'Why are there ANY "religious exemptions" to zoning restrictions?'
There are perfectly valid reasons -- like the ones I gave -- as to why there are some religious exemptions. Your position seems to be that there never should be any at all.
The reason why this case went to the SJC is that there was a dispute over whether this particular use (an RV park for camp participants, volunteers, and staffers) was part of the organization's religious mission, and the SJC ruled that was the case. It'd almost certainly be different if the religious group allowed members of the general public, not participating in their activities, to use the RV park.
We believe...
That God created marriage in His love for us to be exclusively the union of one man and one woman and that sexual conduct is only proper within those bounds.
Taking bets one of those RV's goes on a mission to Coastal Acres RV park in Provincetown...
At costal acres
There's a saying
"If the trailer's a rockin', don't come a knockin"
The hubs and I visited friends there...
Back in the early 90s as they were opening for the season. When the hubs needed to use the non functioning bathroom, he was handed a Maxwell House tin to use instead.
That was the last time he crossed the threshold of an RV
Implying that homophobes are closet cases...
Implying that homophobes are closet cases doesn't do anything to harm the homophobes, or even get more than the dumbest of dumb laughs these days, but it does reinforce the stigmatized status of LGBTQ people.
Development companies are gonna find religion...
When they realize they can do whatever they want claiming they are doing "God's Work."
We house the (potentially) homeless!
Gets them out of some obligations to employees, too e.g. unemployment taxes, medical coverage, etc.
Imagine the variety of sects! Beacon Property Buddhists, Congregation of Suffolk Construction, City Realty Synagogue.
Hah, no.
The courts see through that sort of thing pretty quickly. And that's why, even though the law covers educational facilities, too, BU has to pay taxes on the land it leases to the Hotel Commonwealth and the big Whoop people in Kenmore Square.