In Petra Presbyterian Church v. Village of Northbrook, (7th Cir., June 7, 2007), the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a RLUIPA challenge by a suburban Chicago church that was denied a zoning permit to convert a warehouse into a church. Writing for the court, Judge Posner said: "When there is plenty of land on which religious organizations can build churches (or, as is common nowadays, convert to churches buildings previously intended for some other use) in a community, the fact that they are not permitted to build everywhere does not create a substantial burden." Since there was no substantial burden on the church's free exercise of religion, it was irrelevant that the village may not have had a compelling interest in excluding membership organizations from industrial zones.
The court also rejected the claim that the church had a vested right to operate in the warehouse because the initial refusal of a permit was under a zoning ordinance that discriminated against religious institutions. Subsequently the ordinance was revised to exclude all membership organizations-- not just churches-- from industrial zones. Posner wrote: "If the 1988 ordinance violated RLUIPA, as Northbrook comes close to conceding, Petra didn't have to comply with it. But that doesn't mean that it acquired an immunity from all zoning regulation. It knew or should have known that Northbrook could redo its ordinance to comply with the "less than equal terms" provision of RLUIPA...."
