The little-noticed Supreme Court case that could impact where people pray

By John Fritze, CNN

(CNN) — Daniel Grand wanted to host a small prayer session at his home near Cleveland. Instead, he wound up on a four-year pilgrimage to the Supreme Court.

Grand, an Orthodox Jew, had invited about a dozen people to his rec room in early 2021 for a minyan, a prayer gathering of at least 10 men. Hours after learning about the invitation, city officials in University Heights, Ohio, sent him a cease-and-desist notice demanding that he first obtain a special-use permit.

“I was taken aback, frankly,” Grand told CNN. “I knew I didn’t need a permit to pray.”

For a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court that almost always sides with religious interests, Grand’s little-noticed appeal is primed to expand the power of churches, synagogues and other religious entities to challenge zoning laws that restrict their access to residential neighborhoods.

A decision, expected next year, could make it easier for religious groups to fight regulations dealing with abortion, health coverage for transgender care and anti-discrimination policies opposed on religious grounds. Religious groups say that state and federal governments have tried to avoid First Amendment scrutiny for those and other policies by claiming that the lawsuits challenging them are not yet “ripe” for review in federal court.

That is precisely what University Heights is arguing in Grand’s case.

Mayor Michele Weiss, who was not in office when the confrontation with Grand began, declined to comment. But city officials say in legal papers that Grand could not sue because the city had not technically denied his permit; Grand withdrew his application before the planning commission had fully considered it.

“Candidly, Grand wants this court to serve as a local planning commission,” the city told the Supreme Court, and determine whether its zoning ordinance “applies to the kinds of gatherings he now has in mind — whatever they may be and that is not clear.”

But the processes governments set up to review religious requests to be exempted from policies, critics say, can take too much time.

“Local governments across the country are following this playbook,” said E. Joshua Rosenkranz, a veteran appellate lawyer representing Grand.

“The ramifications of this particular legal issue are huge because you can end up denying all sorts of religious exercise, indefinitely or permanently, just by running out the clock,” he added.

Prayer for relief

For Grand, the idea of hosting a minyan at his home was inspired by convenience. He has no synagogue nearby, he said, and doesn’t drive on the Sabbath.

“If Grand’s next-door neighbor invited nine friends over for a weekly poker night or a Tupperware party, the city would not require a special permit to operate a ‘casino’ or ‘storefront,’” Grand’s attorneys told the Supreme Court. “The city targets only Grand’s religious practice.”

City officials say they believed Grand had a larger gathering in mind. When Grand initially requested a permit, he noted that he had proposed 21 chairs. In his invitation, he had named the gathering: The Shomayah Tefilah Beis Hakeneset. And he invited people to “spread the word” and bring others to his home for prayer, according to court papers.

Sara Bronin, a George Washington University law professor, questioned how the dispute wound up in federal court at all, let alone at the Supreme Court.

“In any ordinary situation, this would have been resolved by the parties at the local level,” said Bronin, an expert on land use who is the founder of the National Preservation Atlas, a national repository of zoning codes.

The language in the University Heights zoning code that allows “customarily incidental” uses is “fairly common in zoning codes across the country,” Bronin said, and “small religious gatherings in a home would, in my view, normally be interpreted to be allowed as a customary and incidental accessory use.”

The Supreme Court fight isn’t technically about the merits of the city’s zoning ordinance, but rather whether Grand could sue before he received a definitive denial of a permit.

Whether a case is “ripe” for review is a question that’s come up at the Supreme Court a lot lately. In April, a unanimous court allowed faith-based “crisis pregnancy centers” in New Jersey to challenge a subpoena from the state’s Democratic attorney general in federal court. New Jersey had tried to argue the case wasn’t ripe for federal court review because the centers hadn’t yet received a court order to enforce the subpoena.

Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that New Jersey’s argument would allow any state to “achieve exactly what the First Amendment forbids, marginalizing dissident voices and reshaping the marketplace of ideas to its pleasure, all while evading any legal challenge to its actions.” Grand relies heavily on the decision in his appeal.

The city is staking its claim on a 1985 precedent involving a bank that was preliminarily denied the ability to develop a property in Tennessee. In that case, a 7-1 majority ruled for the local planning commission, holding that the bank’s case wasn’t ripe because the government hadn’t made a final decision in its case.

More than zoning

Religious groups, including the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, see a connection to a broader “trend of state actors abusing ripeness to burden religion.”

The bishops’ group points to ongoing litigation over a 2024 rule from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that requires employers to provide accommodations for women seeking an abortion, such as paid time off. Under that rule, if a religious employer wants to object to the requirements, its request is reviewed by the EEOC on a case-by-case basis. And until that review is complete, a federal lawsuit may not be ripe for review by courts.

“Over recent decades, federal agencies and state governments have realized that they can manipulate ripeness doctrine by placing a categorical burden on religious exercise but offer an individualized accommodation process,” the Catholic group argued in a brief in Grand’s case. “Then, when religious groups sue based on the burden, the agencies invoke ripeness just like the city has done in this case.”

A federal district court and the Cincinnati-based 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals sided against Grand, agreeing with the city that his case was not ripe.

Grand filed his appeal at the Supreme Court without an attorney, an ill-advised move that almost always leads to a quick denial. But in March, the court asked the city to respond to it, a signal that at least some of the nine justices were interested. By the time Grand filed his reply brief in May, he had a team of lawyers that included not only Rosenkranz but also the prominent religious legal group Alliance Defending Freedom.

Grand, who did have an attorney in the earlier stages of the case, described University Heights as a “beautiful suburb” with a “nice vibe.” But court records also underscore the degree of hostility he has faced. One neighbor wrote a letter to the city complaining that, “I am not Jewish and I do not want our neighborhood labeled as Jewish.”

Grand ultimately saw the process of securing the permit as futile, withdrew his application and filed the lawsuit in federal court in Ohio instead.

“I am not in any place to know what goes on in the head of somebody else,” Grand said when asked if he thought the opposition to his plans was driven by antisemitism. “I look at it as bigotry. People can fill in the blanks for themselves.”

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