The Supreme Court Will Decide: Can a City Use Red Tape To Kill Your Bible Study? By Nathan Moelker September 8 4 min read RELIGIOUS LIBERTY AMICUS BRIEFS AT THE U.S. SUPREME COURTRELATED CASE Listen tothis article The Supreme Court has agreed to hear one of the most consequential religious liberty cases in years – and the ACLJ has filed to make sure the Court gets it right. Grand v. City of University Heights, Ohio asks a deceptively simple question with sweeping implications: Can a municipality shut down a small, home-based Jewish religious gathering through an escalating campaign of bureaucratic pressure, and then escape any federal accountability simply because it never issued a final, formal denial? The Sixth Circuit said yes. We are asking the Supreme Court to say no. We filed in support of the cert petition, and now the high Court is taking and reviewing this important case on the merits. Mr. Grand, a Jewish resident, sought a permit to host a small Jewish prayer quorum – a minyan – in his own home. Instead, he faced a campaign of governmental pressure: hostile hearings, demands for architectural drawings, escalating administrative requirements, and open hostility that made continuing the process untenable. When Mr. Grand, worn down and financially drained, withdrew his application, the Sixth Circuit didn’t blame the city. It blamed him – holding that he was “the author of any chilling effect on his First Amendment interests.” That is exactly backward. Our brief identifies two independent errors, each serious enough on its own to warrant reversal. First, the Sixth Circuit borrowed a “finality requirement” from Williamson County – a Takings Clause case about calculating economic loss from property regulation – and grafted it onto a First Amendment and Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) claim.

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