The lawsuit alleges that city officials treated the rezoning application differently, with a senior planner in the city telling a traffic engineer to take into consideration parking problems that had happened at the only other Muslim place of worship in the city.
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The suit contends that Des Plaines discriminated against the American Islamic Center when it refused to grant a rezoning request to allow AIC to set up a place of worship in a vacant office building it had contracted to purchase. The city also allegedly cited tax revenue losses in their denial of the AIC’s application, despite the fact that they had previously approved zoning applications for other tax-exempt religious organizations.
The You can include.S. Justice Department on Wednesday charged a more residential Chicago neighborhood that often rubbished a Muslim panel ability to avaliable an area of venerate with an office within the making place. “The Justice Department will remain vigilant in its mission to ensure that all religious groups enjoy the right to practice their faiths freely”.
The AIC is a non-profit organization which represents Bosnian Sufi Muslims who fled Yugoslavia during a war there in the mid-1990s.
The American Islamic Center bought the property in February 2013 contingent on rezoning approval. Lynch seeks a court order requiring the city to allow AIC to proceed with the purchase of the property and the construction of its worship center. The City Council denied it on a 5-3 vote six months later.
The lack of a place of worship for the Islamic group, the suit says, has “hindered in conducting weddings, celebrating births and providing funeral prayer services” and, in general, meant “interfaith activities are limited in scope and intensity”.
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RLUIPA, enacted in 2000, contains multiple provisions prohibiting religious discrimination and protecting against unjustified burdens on the exercise of religion.
