An attorney for the Chatham County Board of Commissioners in North Carolina argued that an ongoing legal battle over the denial of a request by former Southern Baptist Convention President J.D. Greear’s The Summit Church to rezone nearly 100 acres of land for its Chapel Hill campus isn’t about religious freedom but about separation of powers.
Steven Bader, an attorney for the Chatham County Board of Commissioners, made the argument Tuesday before Judges A. Marvin Quattlebaum Jr., Barbara Milano Keenan and Deborah L. Boardman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, as the county appealed a preliminary injunction that was granted in favor of The Summit Church last year.
U.S. District Judge William Osteen Jr. of the Middle District of North Carolina granted the preliminary injunction in response to a religious discrimination lawsuit filed by The Summit Church in early 2025. That lawsuit argues that Chatham County’s rejection of its application to rezone the land violates the church’s “civil rights as enshrined in the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and codified in the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.”
The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), enacted in 2000, is a federal law that protects individuals, houses of worship and religious institutions from discrimination in local zoning laws. It also safeguards the religious freedom of individuals confined to state-run institutions like prisons.
In opening arguments, Bader contended that federal courts should not dictate how local governments legislate as a remedy for violating RLUIPA.
“The issue in this case is whether a district court can direct the outcome of a local legislative rezoning decision. The answer is that it cannot. Under our RLUIPA, our courts have the power to strike down or invalidate local legislation that clashes with the statute, but as a remedy, a court cannot direct a local board to go back to the board and legislate in a way that the court directs,” Bader argued during an approximately 45-minute hearing.
“In this way, this is not a case about religious discrimination, as my colleagues would have it. It’s a case about separation of powers.”
Bader argued that his position was grounded in a constitutional principle known as the anti-commandeering doctrine, which prohibits the federal government from forcing state or local governments to enact or enforce federal regulatory programs.
Quattlebaum, however, challenged Bader’s argument, noting that the anti-commandeering doctrine generally does not prevent federal courts from ordering state officials to comply with federal law or the Constitution, and citing case law that supports that point.
Elbert Lin, an attorney for The Summit Church, also argued that the county problematically limited its appeal by arguing that “RLUIPA does not authorize federal courts to compel legislative zoning changes.”
“There’s two problems with that. The first one, I think, is the one Judge Boardman has identified, which is that at this point in the case, there is no order compelling them to legislatively rezone, and I think equally important, there may never be one,” he argued.
He noted that the district court has several options that wouldn’t require any “directing.”
“One of them is the district court could simply say, look, these zoning laws just don’t apply to these six parcels of land. That would remedy the harm to the church, which is their inability to build,” Lin said. “The county might not like that. The removal of the application of these zoning laws doesn’t strike them from the books. It just says they don’t apply to these six parcels.”
The Summit Church asked the court in 2025 to “grant preliminary and permanent injunctive relief.” The church wants the court to require the county to approve its rezoning request and associated site plan, and to “enter a Declaratory Judgment that the County’s denial of Summit Church’s rezoning applications violates RLUIPA, and is therefore void.”
The church also seeks costs and expenses, “including reasonable attorney’s fees; all the damages to which Summit Church is entitled; and any such further relief as it deems appropriate.”
Although Osteen found, based on the evidence and arguments presented by The Summit Church, that it is “entitled to a preliminary prohibitory injunction,” he chose not to grant that form of relief because “the balance of equities/public interest factor favors” Chatham County “with respect to a preliminary mandatory injunction.”
In April, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a statement of interest in support of The Summit Church’s lawsuit two weeks after lawyers for the Chatham County Board of Commissioners asked the court to dismiss it.
The DOJ backed the church’s claim that RLUIPA protects against the county’s discriminatory zoning decision.
“RLUIPA protects the rights of religious groups to exercise their faith free from the precise type of undue government interference exhibited here,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement. “The Civil Rights Division is committed to defending religious liberties as our founders intended and as federal law requires.”
Because RLUIPA is a federal law, the DOJ says it “guards individuals and religious institutions from unduly burdensome, unequal, or discriminatory land use regulations.”
Osteen found that the church “has shown that it is likely to succeed in proving that the impediment imposed by Chatham County — the denial of its proposal — constituted a ‘substantial’ burden on its religious exercise.”
Noah Sacks, a trial attorney for the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, told the court on Tuesday that the county’s argument against the church under RLUIPA threatens the government’s ability to enforce the law.
“The United States Attorney General is charged with enforcing RLUIPA. The United States, therefore, has a strong interest in ensuring that RLUIPA provides broad protection for religious land use across the country,” he argued. “That interest is threatened by the county’s argument, which seeks to use state law to shield itself from RLUIPA.”
“The issue before this court is narrow, as Judge Boardman has hinted at. … The issue is simply whether or not the court was within its jurisdiction to grant the preliminary injunction. Now, the question that the county wants to ask is beyond this appeal, because the court didn’t order the rezoning. Instead, it specifically avoided it.”
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