Judge says New Jersey county can’t exclude churches from historic preservation grant

CNA Staff, Dec 4, 2024 / 16:40 pm (CNA).

Two churches in New Jersey have won a victory against county officials who were excluding them from a historic preservation grant program, a ruling that comes after a key Catholic religious liberty clinic backed their lawsuit.

First Liberty Institute, a Texas-based religious liberty legal group, said in a Monday press release that the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey issued a preliminary injunction against Morris County ordering officials to allow two churches to participate in the county’s Historic Preservation Trust Fund.

In her ruling this week, District Judge Evelyn Padin said the case “illustrates the inherent tension” between the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom and its barring of government endorsement of religion.

The court determined that a “likely free exercise clause violation” stemmed from the county’s policy. The injunction does not order the churches to receive county funding but rather to make them eligible for it.

Jeremy Dys, an attorney with First Liberty Institute, said in the group’s press release that the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly “declared that all forms of religious discrimination by the government are unconstitutional.”

“We are thrilled that the court recognized that religious institutions cannot be excluded from public funding programs like preservation grants simply because of their religious character or religious activities,” Dys said.

The parishes, Mendham Methodist Church and Zion Lutheran Church Long Valley, were supported in their lawsuit by the University of Notre Dame School of Law’s Religious Liberty Clinic, which argued in June that the county’s barring the churches from the program “violates the law and harms congregations and their surrounding communities.”

The Notre Dame Religious Liberty Clinic had argued that barring the churches from the grant program “threatens significant harms that can never be undone,” up to and including church closures.

The county policy is “squarely unconstitutional,” the clinic said.

The county rule came from a 2018 New Jersey Supreme Court ruling that asserted that including the churches in the historic grant preservation program violated the state constitution.

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider a review of the state Supreme Court’s decision, though Justice Brett Kavanaugh said in a statement after that decision that the state rule appeared to be unconstitutional.

“Barring religious organizations because they are religious from a general historic preservation grants program is pure discrimination against religion,” he said.