Law Commons^™

Thou Shalt Not Zone: The Overbroad Applications And Troubling Implications Of Rluipa's Land Use Provisions, Daniel P. Lennington

Seattle University Law Review

With five years of caselaw interpreting RLUIPA and a split among the courts regarding the breadth of the statute, now is an appropriate time to examine the statute's track record and consider its future. This Article will first examine RLUIPA's background, its text, and exactly what Congress intended when it passed the statute. Next, this Article will explain how courts have split on the application of RLUIPA's land use provisions, and in some cases, made it nearly impossible to zone churches, synagogues, mosques or any other religious land uses. Finally, this Article will propose a simple solution--an amendment to RLUIPA, …