Law Commons^™

The Right To Enforce: Why Rluipa's Land Use Provisions Is A Constitutional Federal Enforcement Power, Qasim Rashid

Law Student Publications

The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (“RLUIPA”) superseded the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (“RFRA”), which the Supreme Court held unconstitutional in its application to states in 1997. A two-pronged law, RLUIPA protects prisoners from unjust impositions to their freedom of worship and also ensures religious institutions may use their property for legitimate worship purposes without burdensome zoning law restrictions. This paper focuses specifically on the latter prong and analyzes RLUIPA in light of the growing Islamophobia in America during the previous twenty-four months. For example, the United States Department of Justice reports “of the eighteen RLUIPA matters involving …