August 9, 2006
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT:
media@aclu.org ORANGE, CA - The
American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California today sued the city of
Garden Grove for using an unconstitutional city code to prevent local Buddhists
from expanding their congregation.
The lawsuit on behalf of Quan
Am Temple, which is also known as the Vietnamese Buddhism Study Temple, was
filed in federal district court in Santa Ana.
“Under the Garden
Grove city code, city officials have full discretion to decide what religious
institutions are allowed to practice in the city and where they are allowed to
practice,” said Belinda Escobosa Helzer, a staff attorney for the ACLU of
Southern California in Orange County. “We are challenging this unconstitutional
code so that Quan Am Temple and other religious institutions in the future are
legally allowed to practice their religion.”
The current Garden
Grove statute requires religious institutions to be housed in residential zones
or seek a zone change from the city and obtain a conditional use permit prior to
practicing their religion in the city. The city used this ordinance to prevent
the Quan Am Temple from moving to its newly purchased building, even though the
city has routinely allowed non-profit organizations to be housed in commercial
areas, and has granted zone changes to other religious groups.
The
ACLU is asking the court to block the city from enforcing the ordinance because
it violates the U.S. and California Constitutions as well as the Religious Land
Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000, a federal statute that protects
religious freedom in the land-use and prison contexts.
“It is very
difficult for us to file this complaint, but we feel we have been left with no
choice,” said Thich Dao Quang, the abbot of the Quan Am Temple. “We have done
everything possible to allay the concerns of the city. We reduced the size of
the temple, we added extra parking, we offered to pay property taxes, we
proposed a shuttle service for congregants on busy holidays and we even paid for
a traffic study of the site that said traffic would be reduced, but still the
temple has been denied. We now have nowhere to practice our
religion.”
Quan Am Temple opened in Garden Grove in 1999, but by
2003 the congregation had outgrown its one-story building. To better accommodate
its congregation of 150 to 300 area residents and 14 monks and nuns, in 2004
temple leaders purchased a medical building on 1.8 acres using a $1.95 million
loan from a congregant. The building had been on the market for three years in
an area zoned for “office-professional” use. According to the complaint, the
temple received assurances from city council members that the city would support
converting the building to place of worship. However, despite a recommendation
from city staff, the planning commission and the city council denied the
temple’s requests for permits to begin converting the site.
“The
city says it’s worried about losing its tax base, but the temple has offered to
pay property taxes even though religious institutions are tax-exempt and the
building has sat nearly empty for about three years,” Escobosa Helzer said. “The
temple is hanging on by a string. Its congregation is unable to practice its
religion and the temple is losing money and barely able to survive. They cannot
even afford to keep all the lights on as they try to hang on to the building
while this ordeal continues.”
Today’s complaint is online at:
www.aclu-sc.org/attach/b/buddhisttemplecomplaint.pdf
