Court Upholds Modified Conditional Use Permit For Jewish School

In Concerned Residents of Hancock Park v. City of Los Angeles, (CA Ct. App., Oct. 27, 2009), a California appellate court upheld the decision of the Los Angeles Central Area Planning Commission (CAPC) to expand the conditions in the conditional use permit (CUP) granted to Yavneh Hebrew Academy to operate a school. CAPC expanded the number of individuals who could attend Saturday morning religious services held at the Jewish school from just students and their parents to anyone so long as attendance did not top 300 people. Plaintiffs argued that this allowed the school to effectively function as a public synagogue, instead of as a school. The court disagreed, concluding that "even with the modifications in place, ... Yavneh is a school and not a religious institution, and so it was not required to seek a separate CUP for use as a religious institution." The court also concluded that CAPC properly took the anti-discrimination requirements of RLUIPA into consideration when it fashioned the CUP conditions in a religion-neutral way that was consistent with the practice of secular schools that held extensive Saturday and evening activities.