Professor Brownstein Comments on RLUIPA for Ventura Star
Professor Alan Brownstein commented for the Ventura County Star on new Ventura County regulations designed to conform to federal laws requiring the county to treat religious land uses the same way it treats other proposed developments.
Ventura County supervisors recognized that county ordinances banning churches in open-space zones were almost certainly incompatible with the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) and acted last week to ban almost all "assembly uses" - not just religious ones - from land zoned as open space. But the new ordinance makes exceptions for a few types of development, including convention centers, recreational and sports facilities, jails, and police and fire stations, prompting Professor Brownstein to comment that the county still may not be in compliance with RLUIPA.
"The more exemptions that exist in the land-use regulation, the harder it is to justify excluding churches," Professor Brownstein said. "I think there would be questions as to why they would privilege recreational uses over religious uses."