Supreme Court considers shrine plan on Kentucky church’s residential land

The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the coming months in its latest case involving religious rights. The church’s owner, the nonprofit Missionaries of Saint John the Baptist, claims a right to build a shrine to the Virgin Mary behind its Kentucky church as part of its religious mission. They argue that a federal law can, under certain circumstances, bar governments from implementing land use regulations that impose a substantial burden on religious expression.

Last December, the state’s highest court concluded that a zoning board in Park Hills, a suburb of Cincinnati, didn’t have the authority to grant a variance for the church’s owner to build the shrine on a residential tract. The church group says the Kentucky Supreme Court’s decision conflicts with U.S. Supreme Court precedent and other appellate rulings. The conflict among lower courts is deeply entrenched and widely acknowledged, according to the group’s lawyers.

A neighborhood family, concerned that the project would exacerbate traffic problems, successfully challenged the zoning board’s decision in state court. The family also opposed the group’s Supreme Court petition, arguing there is no basis for the nation’s highest court to intervene in the local zoning dispute. Opponents say the church group knew that zoning ordinances barred it from building the shrine on neighboring residential land when it acquired the property, and that it hasn’t demonstrated why it couldn’t build the shrine on church land.

Read the full story at WTOP News.