New Saint Andrews College contends that Moscow, Idaho officials are applying targeted limitations motivated by hostility toward its founder, Doug Wilson.
A modest Christian college established by the controversial, self-described libertarian theocrat and “Christian nationalist” pastor Doug Wilson asserts in a fresh lawsuit that Moscow, Idaho officials are weaponizing the city’s zoning rules to target its religious mission.
In a federal court filing in early September, New Saint Andrews argues that Moscow officials have piled on a lengthy set of permit requirements, use restrictions, and parking mandates that do not apply to any other local entity.
Whereas nearby downtown businesses are not required to provide parking, the suit contends, New Saint Andrews must maintain 89 parking spaces. The city has permitted the public University of Idaho to operate an art gallery in the downtown zone, while blocking the college from doing the same, the complaint states.
Most recently, Moscow has blocked New Saint Andrews from conducting administrative work in office space it leases in the downtown area. Zoning staff argue that such activities would constitute a “college and university” use that is not allowed in the downtown district.
To comply with the ban on university-related uses, New Saint Andrews has had to hire a separate third-party service provider to carry out exactly the same work in the exact same space.
The college’s lawsuit attributes this unequal treatment to officials’ hostility toward its particular brand of Protestantism, citing public remarks by a city councilmember about the need to “fight” Wilson’s “Christian nationalist church.”
Even before making those remarks, the same councilmember had voted against a zoning variance New Saint Andrews had requested that would have allowed the college to use its downtown office space directly.
New Saint Andrews’ lawsuit maintains that this constitutes a violation of both U.S. and Idaho protections of individual liberty. It also contends that Moscow is infringing a federal statute that imposes strict limits on how localities may regulate religious land uses.
Wilson, who remains a trustee and senior fellow at the college, is a divisive figure both in Moscow and nationwide, given his advocacy for a Protestant confessional state that curbs public expressions of other faiths and endorses legal penalties for biblically proscribed conduct such as adultery and homosexuality.
Other affiliates of his church have echoed similar claims of religious discrimination by zoning officials in other Northern Idaho towns.
The city of Moscow did not respond to Reason‘s request for comment. New Saint Andrews declined Reason‘s request for comment.
Hostility toward Wilson and his church could well explain Moscow’s apparently capricious restrictions on New Saint Andrews. But land-use regimes can impose arbitrary constraints on property owners without a special motive.
Zoning codes typically regulate activities that yield the same neighborhood effects (or even none) in ways that differ depending on who is performing them.
A person recording music in a garage with a friend is permissible. A person recording music in a garage for a paying client is a zoning violation. A local burrito shop is allowed. A national chain burrito restaurant serving the same food in the same location is a zoning violation. And so on.
In the New Saint Andrews case, it makes little difference to the wider world whether its administrative tasks are handled by the college itself or outsourced to a contractor. Only within Moscow’s zoning code does this barely perceptible distinction carry weight.
Fortunately for the college, federal law offers explicit protections for religious land uses. Much like protections for speech, the law requires local land-use regulations affecting religious uses to be narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling government interest.
New Saint Andrews appears to have a strong argument that Moscow’s capricious limitations on the college specifically infringe those federal protections.
As a final observation, it is somewhat ironic that a college so closely tied to Wilson would invoke religious-liberty claims about land-use rules applied to it.
In various interviews, Wilson suggested that in his ideal America there would be explicit limits on the public expression of other faiths, whether that means Hindu statues, minaret-adorned mosques, or Catholic Marian processions.
As things stand, the First Amendment does not permit outright religious discrimination. Federal law would extend protections for Hindu statues or for the architectural embellishments of mosques against the zoning board’s arbitrary whims.
New Saint Andrews is now invoking the same neutral guarantees of religious liberty and of protections for religious land uses that Wilson would deny others. Perhaps the lawsuit will become a teachable moment about the value of broadly applicable protections for individual liberty.
