Cowboy Weathervane_Pai Shih_72dpi_cropBelow are news items from the past week involving local government, religion, and land use that may be of interest to our readers.

  • The New York Times reports that the Ten Commandments monument on the Oklahoma Capitol grounds has been removed following the State Supreme Court’s decision that the monument violated the Oklahoma Constitution (prior post here). The State was facing a Monday deadline to remove the monument.  Reportedly, a conservative policy group will display the monument on private property only a few blocks from the Capitol.
  • The Department of Justice announced that it has filed suit against Des Plaines, Illinois in connection with the American Islamic Center’s efforts to rezone property to construct a mosque. The complaint is available here.  We reported on what appears to be a very similar matter here.  A post about the new lawsuit is forthcoming.
  • The Blaze reports that the City of Jacksonville, Florida and Church of Our Savior have settled a federal lawsuit taken under RLUIPA that will allow the Church to move forward with plans to build a house of worship. Reverend David Ball stated of the settlement: “We are so thankful to finally be free to build a house of worship in the place we believe God has called us.”  As we reported in a prior post, the Church, represented by Daniel P. Dalton, prevailed in this matter by establishing an RLUIPA equal terms violation (decision available here).  The City appealed that decision, but the merits were not heard as a result of the settlement.
  • Radio Station WHMI 93.5 FM reports that Genoa Charter Township, Michigan has rejected Livingston Christian School’s offer to settle a RLUIPA case involving the Township’s denial of a special land use permit to operate a religious school (prior post here). Reportedly, the School offered to drop the lawsuit if the Township issued the permit, but the Township did not respond because it believes the offer “is not a good faith proposal,” since it had previously rejected the same offer.
  • LifeSiteNews reports that The Satanic Temple has sued the State of Missouri and the federal government, arguing that laws restricting abortions violate its members’ religious beliefs. According to the news article, The Satanic Temple believes that abortion is an “essential religious duty” for Satanists and opposed Missouri’s “Informed Consent” and 72-hour waiting period laws.  Satanic Temple Founder Doug Mesner (pseudonym) whose Satanist name is Lucien Greaves stated that Missouri’s law violates the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) because “[t]he question of when life begins is absolutely a religious opinion.”  The defendants have moved to dismiss the lawsuit.
  • According to Religion Clause, “a  Colorado federal district court held that the White supremacist Creativity Movement may qualify as a ‘religion’ for purposes of the First Amendment and RFRA.”  The court, in its decision, noted that whether Creativity is a religion is a factual question and the plaintiff had presented enough facts in his complaint to survive the defendant’s motion to dismiss by identifying certain “commandments” of Creativity.  The complaint “alleges that ‘Creativity addresses all the ultimate questions of life, including the meaning of life and its purpose,’ which, for Creators, is to halt the mixing of races and devote themselves to the salvation and survival of the white race.”  According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Creativitiy is a Neo-Nazi Ideology and is “the latest of several incarnations of the racist group (and religion) originally known as Church of the Creator. The movement promotes what it sees as the inherent superiority and ‘creativity’ of the white race.”

Original Photography by Pai Shih (Licensed, cropped from original)

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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.

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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.

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