Letter: P&Z Should Mind Legal Standards with Respect to Grace Farms

As a taxpayer I write to share my apprehension that the legal standard being urged upon the Commission by the opponents of Grace Farms is Constitutionally suspect and, if applied by the Commission, could result in financial liability to the Town and its officials under the Third Force Bill of 1871, now 28 U.S. Code § 1983. Even if the legal standard urged by the opponents met the Constitutional standard of the Fifth Amendment, viz., the nuisance or “pig in the parlor” test laid down by Justice Sutherland for the Court in Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co.. 272 U.S. 325 (1926), it likely would not meet the higher standard of the free expression clause of the First Amendment.

In 2012 the opponents alleged that the purposes listed in the Foundation’s certificate of incorporation “go far beyond those activities that are typically held by a local New Canaan church.” In February, 2016, the then-chairman of the Commission, Mr. Papp, apparently said that the Commission “need[ed] to decide if the ancillary activities of the church are usual and customary activities of a church.” Attachments to recent letters to the Commission from David Markatos, listed “a number of activities which, in [the opponents’ view], are of the sort for which many other organizations in town would be required to seek approval, were they to occur at their facilities.” That the activities at Grace Farms go beyond those of a typical New Canaan church may be among the reasons for the Grace Church’s success and is clearly a legally improper basis for decision. Put differently, for proponents of Grace Farms to contend that the activities at Grace Farms are religious activities “cannot be deemed bizarre or incredible.” Frazee v. Illinois Dept., 489 U.S. 828, 834 n2 (1989).

In Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520 (1993)—where the U.S. District Judge, in ruling after nine days of trial that animal sacrifices in a religion with African, Roman Catholic, and Mohammedan antecedents offended public morals, and was affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in an unsigned, one paragraph order – the Supreme Court reached down and unanimously reversed. There the church had “announced plans to establish a house of worship as well as a school, cultural center, and museum.” There the Supreme Court rejected the contention that the proposed activities should be measured by the characteristics of other religions.

In any event, most of the activities at Grace Farms are actually not that unusual for modern churches. Over the past decades I have worshipped at many churches that embrace activities of the nature of those at Grace Farms. I grew up in a Methodist Church that had a basketball court. Many churches, including those in Fairfield County and Colorado to my knowledge, serve food after worship, for which money is collected; the Methodist Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, serves food to youth in the community five afternoons a week, and the Bible Church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, had a café outside the sanctuary that served food and beverages several days a week. The Reformed Institute, a consortium of a dozen churches within the National Capital Presbytery, holds seminars and lectures by authors and academicians from out-of-town in its member churches and charges fees for some; I have attended individual Presbyterian churches that offered free lectures by an archaeologist, the president of an academic institution, and panel discussions by a Mormon chaplain and Mormon missionaries and others. I have attended weeknight musical concerts of religious and secular music at churches and cathedrals in New Canaan, Stamford, and Manhattan. So, even if one were to apply the proposed test of activities of the traditional mainline church, Grace Farms would satisfy such a test. In short, in church zoning matters the Commission must avoid limiting the scope of permissible “church” activities to a narrow concept of conventional “church” activities.

I urge the Commission, in church zoning matters, to apply a legally defensible standard for church activities and not the unconstitutional one advanced by the Protestants.

William Malone