Zoning Religious Uses: Emerging Judicial Patterns

Abstract Zoning regulations have been challenged more frequently on a number of grounds not previously raised. Of increasing importance are those challenges based on the First Amendment. Such challenges invoke both the Amendment's free speech clause and the free exercise of religion clause (hereinafter, free exercise). It is interesting to note that the Supreme Court has spoken at great length on the subject of zoning and free speech (as have the lower federal courts), but the Court has consistently declined to hear cases involving zoning and the free exercise clause. For example, during the 1983–1984 term, the Court declined to hear three such cases, and in the 1984–1985 term the Court declined to hear another.1 The lower federal courts have provided little more guidance; as late as 1983 the Sixth Circuit, deciding a case involving exclusion of all church buildings from a residential area, found that “no other federal circuit court has resolved the question.”2