Religious Land Use Research Articles

Sacred Land, Religious Land Use, and Sustainable Urban Development

ABSTRACT: The urban land question is undeniably a pressing societal problem. Criticisms of the financialization of urban land continue, much like the challenge to land grabbing. Questions about alternatives are relatively rare, so this article addresses the following questions: What does sacred land mean in the Thai Buddhist context? How has the belief in sacred land influenced the ethical considerations of religious land use in Thailand? Important in themselves, these questions also invite consideration of how religious land use addresses the challenge of sustainable urban development. Empirical data from interviews were gathered from Buddhist senior monks in five Thai cities and representatives from the Land Development Department and the National Office of Buddhism. Systematic and document analyses of these data show that the notion of sacred land in the Thai Buddhist context is contested. Nonetheless, the belief in sacred land has made Thai Buddhist temple land distinctive and, at the same time, influenced landowners and land users to follow ethical equitable considerations that have substantial ramifications for economy, society, and environment.

The complexity of religious land use: Mosques, titling and informality in China (1949–2023)

In considering complex human-land systems, the land use and planning for places of worship is perhaps not an issue that may first come to mind. Simultaneously, however, it has become an increasingly critical and researched topic due to rising ethnic and cultural tensions in the West. Contrarily, the topic is virtually terra incognita for the Chinese context. This article aims to make up for that shortfall, and examines the way how the space for religious sites in China is acquired, planned and governed. It focuses on one of the more prominent places of worships often contested in the West: the mosque, and particularly those belonging to the Hui minority. The study relies on surveys, in-depth interviews, participant observation and rare documents hitherto unavailable in English, such as (informal) contracts, ownership titles, and historical court rulings. A dual finding is reported: 1) over time, the Chinese state’s envisioned ownership for religious property in general, and Islamic property in particular, has evolved into common property slightly comparable to condominium; 2) despite stated intentions to formalize religious planning, mosques’ land use has remained largely informal. Markedly, local planning authorities continue upholding a grey zone in which Hui Muslim sites of worship are tacitly condoned. Although there are caveats, this “tolerance of informality” offers leeway for religious praxis while providing space to a revolutionary past of complex, contested and convoluted property rights.

Mast v. Fillmore: A Perfect 50th Birthday Present for Yoder

The 1972 decision in Wisconsin v. Yoder is among the significant U.S. Supreme Court rulings adjudicating and establishing precedents around conflicts between religious beliefs and state interest. That Yoder has endured a half century is a testament not to its reasoning, but rather to a continuation of the sociological jurisprudential underpinnings that provided the defendants with the justice that others sought for them. This essay argues that the 2021 ruling in Mast v. Fillmore County, Minnesota, which vacated and remanded for further consideration a Minnesota state court ruling, could not have come at a better time for the fifty-year-old Yoder decision because Mast situates questions of Amish religious liberty squarely in the arena of strict scrutiny (in this case, of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000) rather than by invoking any sociological exceptionalism.

A Religious Double Standard: Post-9/11 Challenges to Muslims’ Religious Land Usage

Muslims in the United States face real limits on their religious freedom. Numerous influential individuals and organizations even posit that Islam is not a religion and that, therefore, Muslims do not have rights to religious freedom. The claim is that Islam is a political ideology that is intent on taking over the country and subverting Americans’ constitutional rights. This narrative has gained momentum since the attacks of September 11, 2001 and continues to be amplified and disseminated by a well-funded cadre of anti-Muslim agitators. One area where its effects can be seen clearly is in religious land use, where a concerted effort to deprive Muslims of basic rights frustrates the aims and principles of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA).

Changing Demographics and the Future of Religious Exercise

Post-Enlightenment Western religion, and legal frameworks responding to it, place special emphasis on individuality and personal conscience. But as the racial and ethnic makeup of the nation evolves, an increasing portion of the nation’s population follows religious traditions that emphasize communal practices. Thus, as demographics change, the appearance of religious exercise will change too. Recent scholarly critique, which questions robust protections for religious free exercise, should consider how certain protections may be particularly valuable for minority, but growing, religious perspectives. Specifically, protections for institutional free exercise and religious land use, with the proper limitations, should be seriously considered as desirable safeguards of minority rights. Such approaches to religious liberty law would respect the communal and embodied nature of religious life which looks to expand in years to come.

Examining the Impact of Land-use Related Factors on Rural Traffic Collisions

Background: More than 70% of fatal collisions belong to rural roads in Iran. A large number of these rural roads are no access control that allows the direct connection of land-uses to the main road. Direct connection of land-uses to the main road introduces conflicts and friction into the traffic stream that increases collision potential. This paper explores the Impact of area-based land-use variables on the frequency of traffic collisions on a divided rural multilane road. Methods: A case study of Rasht-Anzali road is chosen for this study. The collision data is obtained from the highway police department of Guilan province containing four years of collisions occurred in this road from 2014 to 2017. The land-use data is obtained from the rural guide plan of the villages locating beside the roadway supplemented by Google Earth maps. To develop the model inputs, the road centerline is buffered in both sides, and then the buffered roadway is divided into equal segments in each way due to the median dividing of the highway. The collision data has been divided into three different groups of collisions: vehicle-to-vehicle, pedestrian involved and all collisions. Count regressions are used to predict the frequency of collisions in road segments using land-use variables. With attention to over dispersion and excess zeros on the dependent variable, negative binomial and zero-inflated negative binomial regressions are used in this study. The best model for each group is chosen based on Vuong goodness-of-fit measure. Results: The results confirm some land-use impacts in previous researches and suggest some further implications for the interaction between land-uses and rural traffic collisions. With referring to models estimations, commercial, residential, government, and institutional land-uses played an important role in both vehicle-to-vehicle and pedestrian collisions, and religious land-use is found to have an increasing impact on pedestrian collisions. Conclusion: The findings can be useful in understanding the complex interrelationships between land-use and rural collisions, and in facilitating planners and policymakers to build safer roads.

Religious Liberty in Prisons under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act following Holt v Hobbs: An Empirical Analysis

Religion in the United States remains a consistent source of conflict not only because of the breadth and depth of personal religious commitment, but also because of guarantees from the United States Constitution. The First Amendment protects religious Free Exercise but also constrains federal, state, and local governments from establishing official government religions, endorsing religions or religion itself. Despite the risk of potential conflicts with the constitution’s text, Congress has supported laws that expand religious liberty. One such example is the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (2000), which significantly enhanced prisoners’ right to religious exercise above the minimum provided by the First Amendment. In the 2015 case of Holt v. Hobbs, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Muslim prisoner who had been denied his request for religious accommodations under RLUIPA because the prison failed to satisfy the act’s strict scrutiny standard before it denied accommodations to a prisoner to practice his faith. Via an analysis of case law since Holt v. Hobbs was decided in January 2015 until March 2018, we investigate the extent to which Holt has affected judicial voting in RLUIPA cases and how such voting may have been influenced by judges’ ideological dispositions.

Statement of Commissioner Gail Heriot in the U.S. Commission on Civil Rightss Report, Enforcing Religious Freedom in Prison

In September 2008, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights issued a report entitled Enforcing Religious Freedom in Prison. This Statement was part of that report. It supports some aspects of the report but criticizes some of the methodology used by the Commission in drawing its conclusions. It also discusses some aspects of the relationship between the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) and the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA).

Compelling Interest Cacodoxy: Why the Contraception Mandate Fails RFRA's Compelling Interest Analysis

Since its birth in 2011, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s (“ACA”) Contraception Mandate (the “Mandate”) has been a frequent subject of discussion, debate, and litigation. From the outset, the government has defended the Mandate generally in the name of public health and gender equality. While both public health and gender equality are well within the government’s regulatory domain, these broadly framed interests are inadequate to survive the compelling interest test under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (“RFRA”) and its companion, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (“RLUIPA”).As RFRA’s text provides, when a person’s sincere religious exercise is substantially burdened, the government must demonstrate that application of the burden to the person is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest. As the Supreme Court unanimously held in O Centro, RFRA’s “to the person” language requires that strict scrutiny is applied to the asserted harm of granting specific exemptions to a particular religious claimant, rather than the broadly formulated interests justifying the general applicability of a law. As will be explained, there is no compelling governmental interest under RFRA to enforce the Mandate against religious non-profits or closely-held businesses that sincerely hold religious objections, especially for coverage of contraceptives that operate to prevent implantation after fertilization. In Hobby Lobby, the Court assumed arguendo that the government had a compelling interest in the Mandate in order to base its decision on narrow tailoring. In doing so, the Court never conducted a RFRA compelling interest analysis. The purpose of this Note is to argue that the government lacks a compelling interest in enforcing the Mandate against religious non-profits or closely-held businesses after such an organization proves that the Mandate substantially burdens a sincere religious belief. Part I lays the scope and foundation of this Note, providing information on RFRA’s compelling interest test, the organizations and their beliefs, the Mandate, and the coverage mandated. Part II applies RFRA’s compelling interest test to religious non-profits and closely-held businesses. It notes the numerous exemptions already in place, the lack of evidence supporting the government’s claim that the Mandate furthers women’s health, and the small impact the Mandate has on a national scale for employers whose sincerely held religious beliefs are not substantially burdened by its imposition. Part III gives the current status of the Zubik cases, which in part involve the subject of this Note.

Understanding the Establishment Clause: A Revisit

Understanding the Establishment Clause: A Revisit

Knight v Thompson , Marginal Risk, and the Uncertainty of RLUIPA in the Eleventh Circuit

Since the United States Supreme Court decided the case of Holt v Hobbs in 2015, lower courts have continued to struggle to find a unified sense of application regarding claims brought under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA). In the United States, inmates may file RLUIPA claims if prison officials refuse to accommodate their religious needs. In examining these claims, a trend has emerged where federal courts have taken steps to avoid the full effect of Holt1 and looked primarily to Cutter v Wilkinson in extending a high level of deference to prison officials in charge of making these policy decisions—including religious accommodation requests. This trend is exemplified by a recent decision from the Eleventh Circuit in the case of Knight v Thompson, a case that involves a long-standing fight brought by a group of Native American inmates locked away in the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC).

RLUIPA and the Limits of Religious Institutionalism

What special protections, if any, should religious organizations receive from local land use controls? The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (“RLUIPA”)—a deeply flawed statute has been a magnet for controversy since its passage in 2000. Yet until recently, RLUIPA has played little role in debates about “religious institutionalism,” a set of ideas that suggest religious institutions play a distinctive role in developing the framework for religious liberty and that they deserve comparably distinctive deference and protection. This is starting to change: RLUIPA’s magnetic affinity for controversy has begun to connect conflicts over religious land use with larger debates about religious institutionalism. But as this Article will show, there are many good reasons to reject an institutional interpretation of RLUIPA. An institutional interpretation of the statute is inconsistent with RLUIPA’s stated purpose, and will create two tiers of religious claimants, thereby providing unnecessary advantages to existing religious institutions while denying those advantages to new religious institutions. Moreover, reading and applying RLUIPA through the lens of religious institutionalism threatens to exacerbate existing problems that surround what is already a very difficult statute. In short, an institutional interpretation of RLUIPA would not fix the statute’s many flaws; rather, it would make a bad statute much worse.

Lenient in Theory, Dumb in Fact: Prison, Speech, and Scrutiny

The Supreme Court declared 30 years ago in Turner v. Safley that prisoners are not without constitutional rights: Any restriction on those rights must be justified by a reasonable relationship between the restriction at issue and a legitimate penological objective. In practice, however, the decision has given prisoners virtually no protection. Exercising their discretion under Turner, correctional officials have saddled prisoners’ expressive rights with a host of arbitrary restrictions — including prohibiting President Obama’s book as a national security threat; using hobby knives to excise Bible passages from letters; forbidding all non-religious publications; banning Ulysses, John Updike, Maimonides, case law, and cat pictures. At the same time, the courts have had no difficulty administering the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), which gives prisons far less deference by extending strict scrutiny to free exercise claims by prisoners. Experience with the Turner standard demonstrates that it licenses capricious invasions of constitutional rights, and RLUIPA demonstrates that a heightened standard of review can protect prisoners’ expressive freedoms without compromising prison security. It is time for the Court to revisit Turner.

Facing Mecca from Prison: Religious Accommodation of Muslim Prisoners Before Holt v. Hobbs

On January 20, 2015, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Arkansas Department of Correction’s grooming policy restricting a Muslim inmate from growing a half-inch beard violated the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA). The majority decision in Holt v. Hobbs, delivered by Justice Alito, held that the prison’s restriction substantially burdened Abdul Maalik Muhammad’s right to practice his faith – Islam. For Muslim men like Abdul Maalik Muhammad, donning a beard demonstrates piety, and emulation of Islam’s final and foremost messenger, Mohammed.Holt came before the Supreme Court during a moment of rising scholarly interest in the Muslim prison population. The War on Terror has converted American prisons into battlegrounds, pitting prison officials against “radical Islam.” In addition to fear of prisoner radicalization, the Nation of Islam (NOI), an African-American Muslim movement conceived in Detroit in 1930, is still strongly represented in American prisons. Scholars have not only paid little attention to the experience of NOI Muslim inmates, but also, segregated this narrative from the modern legal discourse about Muslim inmates have in the War on Terror era. The decision in Holt provides the ideal juncture to integrate the modern experience of Muslim prisoners with the pioneering strides brought forth by NOI Muslim inmates. This Article highlights the legal challenges and strategies used by incarcerated followers of the NOI and the victories earned: first, gaining judicial recognition of Islam as a religion prison authorities must accommodate; second, establishing that prisoners had standing to sue in federal court under the Civil Rights Act of 1871; and third, netting a range of fundamental religious accommodations that were not peculiar to the NOI, but amenable to Muslims across sectarian lines. Through an analysis of this litigation, this Article also examines the judicial construction of the NOI’s legal identity, impacted heavily by popular representations and misrepresentations of the movement that spiked in the late 1950’s – decades before the recent Holt decision.

RLUIPA's Equal Terms Clause and the Circuit Split: It's All About the Money

Families are not the only ones struggling to make ends meet in the Great Recession; so are cities. Some are even going bankrupt, and as municipalities struggle to find revenue and make ends meet, the temptation to eliminate those who get in the way — like religious institutions — may grow. Tax revenue and economic development have become the centerpiece of a new and spreading area of conflict in the law of church and state. This Essay examines the roots of conflict between religious institutions and local governments, and adds a framework for considering the potential zones of conflict between them. In understanding what conflicts may arise, why they arise, and how they figure into litigation, we are better prepared to address litigation between these two entities. While there are many different reasons for conflict resulting in litigation under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA), one topic has made its way into the cases more often than the others — economic issues and revenue generation. The fact that churches do not add to a city’s revenue has become a deciding issue in many of the cases. As the circuits split over how exactly to apply the requirement of the Equal Terms clause in RLUIPA, the tests they have chosen weigh economic considerations differently in their analysis and in the outcome of litigation.

Limiting Principles and Empowering Practices in American Indian Religious Freedoms

Employment Division v. Smith was a watershed moment in First Amendment law, with the Supreme Court holding that neutral statutes of general applicability could not burden the free exercise of religion. Congress's subsequent attempts, including the passage of Religious Freedom Restoration Act and Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, to revive legal protections for religious practice through the legislative and administrative process have received tremendous attention from legal scholars. Lost in this conversation, however, have been the American Indians at the center of the Smith case. Indeed, for them, the decision criminalizing the possession of their peyote sacrament was only the last in a series of Supreme Court cases denying American Indian Free Exercise Clause claims. Moreover, the Supreme Court's Indian cases share a common and previously overlooked feature: in all of them, the Court assessed the Indian claims as too broad or too idiosyncratic to merit Free Exercise Clause protection and instead denied them through a succession of bright line formulations. Identifying the unrequited search for a “limiting principle” as a basis for analysis, this Article reassesses the religion cases and underlying theoretical questions of institutionalism and equality, in their Indian context. It then identifies two contemporary policy shifts-namely Congress's decision to entrust accommodation of Indian religious freedoms to federal agencies and its decision to do so at the tribal, versus individual, level-that have, in some respects, facilitated an “empowering practices” approach to American Indian religious liberties in the post-Smith era. Taking a descriptive and contextual approach, the Article illuminates opportunities for additional law reform in the American Indian context and also larger questions of institutionalism, equality, and pluralism in religious freedoms law.

Institutional Free Exercise and Religious Land Use

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. E.E.O.C. declared that the First Amendment “gives special solicitude to the rights of religious organizations.” This recognition of institutional free exercise rights has important implications for religious land uses. The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) protects religious landowners from the imposition, through a land use regulation, of a substantial burden on religious exercise. Most RLUIPA claims are brought by the religious institution that owns property subject to a regulation. Nonetheless, courts and commentators evaluate these claims by applying a standard derived from cases involving individual free exercise rights. This approach has contributed to the significant lack of clarity regarding what constitutes a substantial burden, leaving property owners and local governments without a firm conception of the scope of land use protections for religious institutions. This Article contends that courts and commentators have failed to consider the implications of the institutional identity of the vast majority of land use claimants under RLUIPA. Both the concept of institutional free exercise and the treatment of institutions in other land use contexts shed significant light on how to clarify land use protections for religious institutions. Institutional free exercise provides a touchstone for distinguishing between the religious exercise of religious institutions and individual adherents and for understanding the distinct ways in which these institutions experience burdens. The treatment of nonprofit institutions in comparable land use contexts, particularly hardship claims under landmark laws, can help shape an analysis sensitive to the distinct, non-commercial concerns of religious property owners. The analysis proposed in this Article reframes the interpretation of RLUIPA and provides insights applicable to evaluating hardships on other civil society institutions. It also offers broader insights into the relationship between religious institutions and the state and a starting point for further scholarship on how Hosanna-Tabor and the concept of institutional free exercise should affect institutional claims in other contexts.

How Jewish Laws of Resistance Can Aid Religious Freedom Laws

This Comment synthesizes current United States religious freedom jurisprudence and argues that it is inadequate for protecting religious practice. As currently applied, the First Amendment, the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act, and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act do not sufficiently consider the perspective of the burdened religion. Religious freedom laws exist to navigate between the needs of society and the needs of religious participants. An evaluation of any prospective law should therefore consider both sides’ needs. This Comment presents a framework for considering the severity of the burden that a law places on a religion and argues that the severity of the burden should be a factor in determining whether a secular law should be upheld.

Religious Freedom and Inmate Grooming Standards

This Article explores the Eleventh Circuit's repeated rejection of challenges, under the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), to inmate grooming policies (that require inmates to shave or cut their hair) in suits brought by who subscribe to a religion that mandates the growing of facial hair or long hair. It suggests, based on an analysis of case law, states' policies, and recent legal developments, that the Eleventh Circuit's approach in upholding these policies is no longer sustainable. Today, thirty-nine states, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and D.C., do not have restrictive grooming policies or expressly grant religious exemptions to such policies, leaving only eleven states -- including the three states within the Eleventh Circuit -- that enforce restrictive grooming policies without the availability of a religious exemption. Also of note is the fact that the Department of Justice has intervened recently in two RLUIPA cases on behalf of inmates, arguing that the restrictive grooming policies of California and Alabama must be invalidated unless the state can present evidence that the plaintiffs in the suit have given rise to a penological concern that justifies the policies. California settled its case and agreed to eliminate its restrictive grooming policy. Against this backdrop, the Eleventh Circuit's routine defense of restrictive grooming policies seems out of step and at least worthy of scrutiny.Accordingly, I propose the following: assuming that a state's restrictive grooming policy requiring the cutting or shaving of hair substantially burdens a sincere religious practice of an inmate, and that the state’s penological interests undergirding the policies (such as security and order) are compelling, a court must probe the state as to why the existence of medical exemptions does not undermine these proffered interests and why restrictive grooming policies applied to inmates with relevant religious views is necessary given the fact that a vast and growing majority of jurisdictions do not have such policies or affirmatively grant religious exemptions despite sharing the same underlying penological interests as those states with restrictive grooming codes. A state with a restrictive grooming policy may satisfactorily defend these policies only by showing a particularized evidentiary basis for why the specific inmate in question poses an actual or threatened risk to a penological interest that supports the challenged policies. This searching standard, I posit, should replace the more deferential standard that the Eleventh Circuit has applied. If adopted, the Eleventh Circuit would not only maximize the religious freedom of inmates, but prevent states from circumventing liability and restricting religious exercise by merely reciting its penological interests and providing generalized support for its policies. The court would also bring itself in line with what appears to be a shift in the ability of states to meet its penological goals without resorting to restrictions on grooming.

Unequal Application of RLUIPA's 'Equal Terms' Provision

This Comment addresses the current split between the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, the Third Circuit, and, most recently, the Seventh Circuit regarding the equal terms provision of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA). The equal terms provision is within the land use provisions of RLUIPA. Even though these land use provisions implicate important issues, such as the extent to which state and local governments can exclude religious establishments from commercial districts, the United States Supreme Court has not addressed the equal terms provision. Since the Supreme Court has not addressed the issue, lower federal courts are left to rely upon their own case by case analysis without any guidance from the Court. The recent three way split among the circuits shows that, not only are lower federal courts interpreting the equal terms provision differently, but that the Supreme Court should address this RLUIPA provision to avoid more confusion among circuits.The equal terms provision of RLUIPA provides that the government cannot prefer secular institutions or assemblies over religious assemblies when dealing with land use regulations. Courts’ interpretation of this provision, regardless of its scope, affects the ability of religious institutions to locate in densely populated areas and convenient locations. As many cities attempt to revitalize the economies of urban districts and engage in city projects to increase commercial activity and city productivity, the equal terms provision interpretations are becoming more important. For example, in New York, the zoning commission recently refused to allow a religious institution to build in a particular zone stating that the issue was the traffic and other half was the church’s tax exempt status. Although a few articles have been written on the split between the Eleventh and Third Circuit, the recent Seventh Circuit’s choice to deviate from both circuits’ standards and create its own for interpreting the equal terms provision further shows that the Supreme Court must address this important provision. The lack of governing precedent on the issue has led to a doctrinal circuit split between the Eleventh, Third, and Seventh Circuits. The circuits have differing interpretations as to the meaning of the equal terms provision and disagree as to what standard of should be used when deciding whether a secular institution (or assembly) is treated more favorably than a religious institution (or assembly). Further, the circuits also differ as to what of scrutiny should be applied when local and state governments implement regulations that favor secular institutions or assemblies over religious ones. This Comment argues that the United States Supreme Court should address and interpret the equal terms provision of RLUIPA, and recommends an the Court should adopt. Specifically, it recommends that the Eleventh Circuit’s should be adopted. Further, it discusses the Eleventh, Third, and Seventh Circuit approaches. The analysis of the Seventh Circuit is in-depth, and most critiqued, since it was only recently articulated in July 2010. The Author argues for the adoption of the Eleventh Circuit to the of for determining whether a secular assembly is treated more favorably than a religious one, and that the Eleventh Circuit’s level of scrutiny that federal courts should apply to governmental regulations favoring secular assemblies should be adopted. The Eleventh Circuit’s comparison by category approach allows for protection of religious establishments from discrimination, and also further congressional intent behind the equal terms provision. Moreover, the Third and Seventh Circuit approaches allows creators of land use regulations to manipulate these regulations in ways in a way the permit discriminatory land use provisions that should be invalidated under RLUIPA. Further, the Eleventh Circuit’s strict scrutiny requirement is preferable to the other circuits’ scrutiny levels, because it allows the occasional statute truly designed to further a compelling governmental interest to survive an equal terms provision challenge.This Comment first outlines Supreme Court religious exercise jurisprudence prior to RLUIPA’s enactment. Next, it discusses RLUIPA and its relevant portions, and addresses the different approaches from the Eleventh, Third, and Seventh Circuits. Then, it discusses why the Eleventh Circuit is preferable to the Third and Seventh Circuit approaches. Finally, it explains why a Supreme Court precedent on this issue, regardless of which is chosen, is imperative.