New York State Attorney General Calls Out Town for Potential Religious Land Use Discrimination

The New York state attorney general’s office has intervened in an ongoing land use controversy in Forestburgh, New York (pop. 793). According to the Times Union, “The state attorney general’s office is warning the leaders of a Sullivan County town that zoning regulations they adopted last year for ‘places of worship’ may be discriminatory because they appear to have been designed to block a large development project proposed by Hasidic Orthodox Jews.”

The issue began four years ago when the developers, who have Hasidic Orthodox Jewish principles, purchased property and development rights for $13 million from another developer who had received approvals from the town for a planned development district with 2,000 residences. But a lawsuit filed earlier this year, the second associated with this issue, alleges the town enacted burdensome zoning regulations — including requiring a minimum of five acres for places of worship and lot-line setbacks that are larger than those required for similar building uses — because the developers intend Jewish people to live there. “They said the town also raised their property assessment and increased development fees to dissuade them from developing the site,” reports Brendan J. Jones for the Times Union.

Town officials dispute the accusations, saying the regulations do not specifically call out any race or religion. But the state’s attorney general office’s letter to Forestburgh’s town supervisor states that the zoning regulations in question contain no written justification for the onerous restrictions on religious uses and therefore appear to violate state and federal religious discrimination laws. The regulations were also developed in closed-door executive sessions with no public minutes, so “it is impossible to know what the deciding factors were in imposing the prohibitive size requirements on religious uses.”

The Times Union also reports that this issue is not a unique one in the state. Three years ago, New York attorney general’s office reached agreements with a few other towns to end what state officials say were discriminatory housing practices also designed to prevent Hasidic Orthodox Jewish residents from moving there.