Al Madany Islamic Center and the Norwalk Zoning Commission have agreed to the terms of a proposed settlement stemming from the Commission’s 2012 denial of the Islamic Center’s proposal to construct a 27,000 square-foot mosque and multi-purpose hall on 1.5 acres in a residential neighborhood.  The U.S. Department of Justice intervened in the case after the City challenged the constitutionality of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), and reportedly encouraged the parties to settle.  Before the terms of the settlement can be formally entered by the Court, state law requires that a public hearing be held by the Commission.  The public hearing is scheduled for September 4, 2014.  A summary of the proposed settlement agreement is found here.

The Commission will grant a special permit to the Islamic Center to use the property as a “house of worship” subject to certain conditions and limitations.  The Islamic Center has agreed to reduce the useable space in the recreational building, reduce the overall size of the building, and increase the amount of on-site parking provided.  It will do so in part by replacing the first floor usable space in the accessory or recreational building with a parking deck, reducing the amount of space to be used and increasing the amount of onsite parking.  There will also be a reduction in the cubic volume of the facility by approximately 11 percent.  The Islamic Center will increase the size and amount of plantings on the property, and will pay for undefined “traffic calming measures” at the site.  There will be no amplified or unamplified calls to prayer from the proposed mosque’s minaret, and no amplified calls to prayer outdoors on the property.  The proposed settlement would also require that the Islamic Center hold two prayer services on the Islamic High Holy Days to minimize the potential need for off-site parking, and hire police or other appropriate officers to direct traffic.

The City and its insurance carrier will pay the Islamic Center more than $307,000 as part of the settlement, to be approved by the City Council.  If the City instead pursued this matter to trial and lost, it would be subject to attorneys’ fees, which, in this case, its lawyers estimate could potentially reach several millions of dollars.

The City is represented by Marci Hamilton, the Paul R. Verkuil Chair in Public Law at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, one of the foremost experts on RLUIPA.  Hamilton, in a statement with the online newspaper Nancy On Norwalk, has praised the settlement as an appropriate compromise between the City, the Islamic Center, and neighbors:

This is the best settlement that I have seen a city negotiate for its citizens of any of the settlements I have seen.  One of the reasons I say that is the city from the beginning has refused to be cowed by the RLUIPA club.  That meant that they basically insisted on their neutral land use principals to guide this. . . .

This is how land use was operating before RLUIPA, it’s how it should be operating and I give Norwalk a tremendous amount of credit for just sticking to principal, and for the mosque to also be willing to just say, “OK, we really want to be able to build our mosque.  We don’t really want to be in litigation for years and years.”  So I was really glad to see the rational heads prevail, but, to be honest, I’ve been impressed with Norwalk from the beginning because the city had an interest in challenging constitutionality.

Even with a good result like this, this case should never have been filed, in my view.  I think RLUIPA is a very bad law.  I think it’s unconstitutional, it’s unfair to local governments.  But once the lower court rightly said “I can’t hold it unconstitutional, it’s going to have to go up to the Second Circuit,” then the city had to decide.  Is it going to continue to litigate or is it going to try to figure out the answer?  I encouraged it to settle, not because I thought the facts were against the city, but because I always think it’s better to figure that out if you can. So they done good.

We previously reported on this case here and here.

Print:
Email this postTweet this postLike this postShare this post on LinkedIn
Photo of Evan Seeman Evan Seeman

Evan J. Seeman is a lawyer in Robinson+Cole’s Hartford office and focuses his practice on land use, real estate, environmental, and regulatory matters, representing local governments, developers and advocacy groups. He has spoken and written about RLUIPA, and was a lead author of…

Evan J. Seeman is a lawyer in Robinson+Cole’s Hartford office and focuses his practice on land use, real estate, environmental, and regulatory matters, representing local governments, developers and advocacy groups. He has spoken and written about RLUIPA, and was a lead author of an amicus curiae brief at the petition stage before the United States Supreme Court in a RLUIPA case entitled City of San Leandro v. International Church of the Foursquare Gospel.

Evan serves as the Secretary/Treasurer of the APA’s Planning & Law Division. He also serves as the Chair of the Planning & Zoning Section of the Connecticut Bar Association’s Young Lawyers Section, and is the former Co-Chair of its Municipal Law Section. He has been named to the Connecticut Super Lawyers® list as a Rising Star in the area of Land Use Law for 2013 and 2014. He received his B.A. in political science and Russian studies (with honors) from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where he was selected as the President’s Fellow in the Department of Modern Languages and Literature. Evan received his Juris Doctor at the University of Connecticut School of Law, where he served on the Connecticut Law Review. While in law school, he interned with the Connecticut Office of the Attorney General in the environmental department, and served as a judicial intern for the judges of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Court. Following law school, Evan clerked for the Honorable F. Herbert Gruendel of the Connecticut Appellate Court.

Read more about Evan Seeman
Show more Show less
Photo of Dwight Merriam Dwight Merriam

Dwight H. Merriam founded Robinson+Cole’s Land Use Group in 1978. He represents land owners, developers, governments and individuals in land use matters, with a focus on defending governments in RLUIPA cases. Dwight is a Fellow and Past President of the American Institute of…

Dwight H. Merriam founded Robinson+Cole’s Land Use Group in 1978. He represents land owners, developers, governments and individuals in land use matters, with a focus on defending governments in RLUIPA cases. Dwight is a Fellow and Past President of the American Institute of Certified Planners, a former Director of the American Planning Association (APA), a former chair of APA’s Planning and Law Division, Immediate Past Chair of the American Bar Association’s Section of State and Local Government Law, Chair of the Institute of Local Government Studies at the Center for American and International Law, a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, a member of the Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute National Advisory Board, a Fellow of the Connecticut Bar Foundation, a Counselor of Real Estate, a member of the Anglo-American Real Property Institute, and a Fellow of the American College of Real Estate Lawyers.

He teaches land use law at the University of Connecticut School of Law and at Vermont Law School and has published over 200 articles and eight books, including Inclusionary Zoning Moves Downtown, The Takings Issue, The Complete Guide to Zoning, and Eminent Domain Use and Abuse: Kelo in Context. He is the senior co-author of the leading casebook on land use law, Planning and Control of Land Development (Eighth Edition). Dwight has written and spoken widely on how to avoid RLUIPA claims and how to successfully defend against them in court. He is currently writing a book on the subject, RLUIPA DEFENSE, for the American Bar Association.

Dwight has been named to the Connecticut Super Lawyers® list in the area of Land Use Law since 2006, is one of the Top 50 Connecticut Super Lawyers in Connecticut, and is one of the Top 100 New England Super Lawyers (Super Lawyers is a registered trademark of Key Professional Media, Inc.). He received his B.A. (cum laude) from the University of Massachusetts, his Masters of Regional Planning from the University of North Carolina, where he was the graduation speaker in 2011, and his J.D. from Yale. He is a featured speaker at many land use seminars, and presents monthly audio land use seminars for the International Municipal Lawyers Association. Dwight has been cited in the national press from The New York Times to People magazine and has appeared on NBC’s The Today Show, MSNBC and public television.

Dwight also had a career in the Navy, serving for three tours in Vietnam aboard ship, then returning to be the Senior Advisor of the Naval ROTC Unit at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill where he taught Defense Administration and Military Management as an Assistant Professor in the undergraduate and graduate curriculum in Defense Administration and Military Management. He left active duty after seven years to attend law school, but continued on for 24 more years as a reserve Surface Warfare Officer with two major commands, including that of the reserve commanding officer of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center. He retired as a Captain in 2009 after 31 years of service.

Show more Show less