Locke v. Davey and expanded free exercise rights

[Hamilton02 at aol.com]

Congress was not even thinking of other landowners, because it is clueless 
when it comes to land use law.  Its only foray into land use has been to enforce 
equality norms in the federal housing laws, not to meddle with setback, 
traffic, and height restrictions.  But Congress, like anyone else, is responsible 
for the natural consequences of its actions, so its demotion of all landowners 
to second-class citizen status as compared to religious landowners looks like 
hostility to me (and thousands, if not millions, of homeowners across the 
country).  To call the destruction of the residential quality of a neighborhood 
"mild" seems a bit of an understatement, unless, of course, one believes that 
the Constitution has a built-in preference for religious observance over family 
home ownership.  I don't.

It is true, of course, that RLUIPA targets local government by directly 
regulating local law, but that simply goes to show its severe violation of 
federalism, a topic beyond the scope of this listserv.

Marci



> Since the Court supposedly rejected the EC claim for the same reasons it 
> rejected the FE claim, it appears that the new standard would uphold 
> legislative disfavor that is “of a far milder kind.”  Whether it is one’s view that 
> RLUIPA was born from accommodationist concerns or a desire to impose pre-Smith 
> law, it can hardly be said that Congress was acting out of hostility to other 
> landowners.  If anyone was being targeted, it would be the municipal bodies 
> that burden religious exercise.  It is certainly true that “the nonreligious 
> landowner gets nothing” out of RLUIPA (other than sharing in the same 
> protections for his/her own place of worship, of course) but even if this can be 
> called disfavor, it has to be “milder” than that faced by theology students 
> that were at least targeted in some fashion.
> 
>   
> 
> Roman
> 
> 

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