Bethel World Outreach Ministries v. Montgomery Cnty. Council

• Decision Date: 31 January 2013
• Docket Number: No. 11–2176.,11–2176.
• Citation: 706 F.3d 548
• Parties: BETHEL WORLD OUTREACH MINISTRIES, of Montgomery County, Plaintiff–Appellant, v. MONTGOMERY COUNTY COUNCIL; Montgomery County, Maryland, Defendants–Appellees. United States of America; Christ International Ministries; Families Across America, Inc.; Grace Missionary Society; The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, Amici Supporting Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

706 F.3d 548

BETHEL WORLD OUTREACH MINISTRIES, of Montgomery County, Plaintiff–Appellant,

v. MONTGOMERY COUNTY COUNCIL; Montgomery County, Maryland, Defendants–Appellees.United States of America; Christ International Ministries; Families Across America, Inc.; Grace Missionary Society; The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, Amici Supporting Appellant.

No. 11–2176.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued: Dec. 4, 2012.

Decided: Jan. 31, 2013.

ARGUED:Roman Paul Storzer, Storzer & Greene, PLLC, Washington, D.C., for Appellant. Angela MacDonald Miller, United States Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., for Amici Supporting Appellant. Patricia Prestigiacomo Via, County Attorney's Office, Rockville, Maryland, for Appellees. ON BRIEF:Robert L. Greene, Storzer & Greene, PLLC, Washington, D.C., for Appellant. Marc P. Hansen, County Attorney, Edward B. Lattner, Division Chief, Division of Human Resources & Appeals, Paul F. Leonard, Jr., Associate County Attorney, County Attorney's Office, Rockville, Maryland, for Appellees. Jocelyn Samuels, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Dennis J. Dimsey, United States Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., for the United States, Amicus Supporting Appellant. Eric C. Rassbach, Lori H. Windham, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, Washington, D.C., for Christ International Ministries, Families Across America, Inc., Grace Missionary Society, and The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, Amici Supporting Appellant.

Before MOTZ, FLOYD, and THACKER, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded by published opinion. Judge MOTZ wrote the opinion, in which Judge FLOYD and Judge THACKER joined.

OPINION

DIANA GRIBBON MOTZ, Circuit Judge:

Bethel World Outreach Ministries brought this action asserting that Montgomery County's zoning regulations, which prevented Bethel from constructing a church, violated the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (“RLUIPA”), the United States Constitution, and the Maryland Declaration of Rights. The district court granted summary judgment to the County on all claims. For the reasons that follow, we reverse the judgment of the district court as to Bethel's RLUIPA “substantial burden” claim, affirm in all other respects, and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

I.

Bethel, a Christian church, owns a place of worship in Silver Spring, Maryland, and rents a satellite facility in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Both Silver Spring and Gaithersburg are located in Montgomery County.

Bethel's Silver Spring church seats approximately 450 people at one time and the Gaithersburg facility seats approximately 300; Bethel's total weekly attendance at all services is about 1500. To accommodate its congregation Bethel must hold four services every Sunday—three in Silver Spring and one in Gaithersburg. The number of services restricts their length, and requires that Communion not be held until after the services.

Time and space limitations also sometimes require Bethel to cut short its important “Altar Call” practice, in which attendees may publicly dedicate their lives to Christ, join the church, or request specific prayers. After the service, the director of Altar Call traditionally conducts conversations with those who have come forward regarding their spiritual beliefs. Because the church itself lacks facilities to accommodate these conversations, the director must use a small, partitioned area in the visitor center.

Even with four services each Sunday, Bethel faces overcrowding, and ushers must sometimes prevent worshipers from entering the sanctuary. Bethel also lacks facilities for other programs, including religious education, health education, and various counseling services. And because adults use all available classrooms, Bethel is unable to provide programs exclusively for youths.

For all of these reasons, in 2004 Bethel purchased a 119–acre property on Brink Road, also in Montgomery County. Bethel planned to build a new, larger church on this property.

The Brink Road property is located within a 93,000–acre area that the County designated in 1980 as an agricultural reserve. To preserve the environmental and aesthetic benefits of open spaces in the agricultural reserve, the County zoned most of it as a “rural density transfer zone” subject to a transferable development rights system. Under that system, developers can purchase rights from landowners in the rural density transfer zone to build in other areas of the County. The property of the landowner who sells the development rights is then subject to an easement, which restricts the density of residential development permitted on that property. Prior to 2007, the easements did not affect institutional use of property in the zone, so a church was a permitted use on Bethel's property.

Under the County's water and sewer plan, however, the County generally did not provide public service in rural density transfer zones, though it did consider case-by-case exceptions to that policy. Before 2005, the County's private institutional facilities policy provided a means by which institutional users, including religious institutions like Bethel, could request amendments to the County's water and sewer plan. In 2001, Bethel's predecessor on the Brink Road property, Farm Development Company, LLC, requested such an amendment, which would have provided it with public water and sewer service, and allowed it to build four 1000–seat churches.

At least partially in response to this request, in 2003 the County began reviewing its private institutional facilities policy and considered changes that would have prevented Farm Development and other institutional users in the rural density transfer zone from gaining access to the public water and sewer system. The County did not at that time implement any such changes, but indicated that further review of the policy would be needed.

In 2004, after purchasing the Brink Road property, Bethel substituted itself for Farm Development on the request for public water and sewer service. Bethel planned to build a 3000–seat church, a school, a daycare building, a social hall, and offices on the property. In November 2005, the Council denied Bethel's request and in the same meeting approved an amendment to the water and sewer plan prohibiting public water and sewer service to private institutional facilities in the rural density transfer zone.

In January 2006, Bethel filed a petition for administrative mandamus in state court, challenging the denial of its application for public water and sewer service as unlawful, arbitrary, capricious, unsupported by substantial evidence, and violative of the Maryland Declaration of Rights and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (“RLUIPA”), 42 U.S.C. § 2000cc et seq. Two years later, the state court granted summary judgment to the County; the Court of Special Appeals later affirmed. See Bethel World Outreach Church v. Montgomery Cnty., 184 Md.App. 572, 967 A.2d 232 (Md.Ct.Spec.App.2009).

While Bethel's state court action was pending, the County Council considered the application of another religious institution, Derwood Bible Church, for approval of the private well and septic system necessary to build a 1500–seat church in the rural density transfer zone.¹ In February 2006, the Council approved an amendment to the County's water and sewer plan that restricted the size of new private well and septic systems in rural density transfer zones. A month later, the County denied Derwood's request because Derwood's proposed private well and septic system exceeded the maximum capacity permitted by this amendment, known as the Knapp Cap.

Because the County had earlier (in November 2005) amended its water and sewer plan to prevent private institutional facilities from obtaining access to the public water and sewer system, the Knapp Cap's restriction on private systems effectively imposed a size limitation on new private institutional facilities in the rural density transfer zone. In response to this limitation, Bethel modified its plan in order to comply with the Knapp Cap, and in January 2007 applied for a private well and septic system to support the construction of a smaller, 800–seat church.

In October 2007, while that application was pending, the County Council adopted an amendment to its zoning provisions, ZTA 07–07, which prohibits a landowner from building a private institutional facility on any property subject to a transferable development rights easement. Because Bethel's property is subject to such an easement, ZTA 07–07 bars it from building even the smaller 800–seat church. In April 2008, the County “deferred” Bethel's well and septic application pending submission of a proposed use consistent with ZTA 07–07 ( i.e., agriculture or single family homes); Bethel's appears to have been the only pending application effectively denied based on ZTA 07–07.

A month later, in May 2008, Bethel filed this action in federal court alleging that ZTA 07–07 and the “deferral” of its application for a well and septic system violated its rights under RLUIPA, the First and Fourteenth Amendments, and the Maryland Declaration of Rights. After completion of discovery, the County moved for summary judgment. The district court conducted a hearing and then granted summary judgment to the County on all claims. Bethel noted a timely appeal. We review the district court's grant of summary judgment de novo. Waller ex rel. Estate of Hunt v. City of Danville, 556 F.3d 171, 174 (4th Cir.2009).²

II.

Bethel's principal appellate argument is that the County violated the substantial burden provision of RLUIPA. See42 U.S.C. § 2000cc(a)(1). That provision prohibits the imposition or implementation of any land use regulation in a manner that:

imposes a substantial burden on the religious exercise of a person, including a religious assembly or institution, unless the government...