06/08/2026
Abusing RLUIPA to bypass local zoning laws is a growing and well-documented problem across the country — and what's happening in New Berlin fits the pattern perfectly.
You've heard MRM and our city officials repeat some version of this: "We have to approve this because of RLUIPA, the ADA, and the Fair Housing Act."
It sounds authoritative. It's meant to. But it's not the whole truth — and you deserve to understand why.
WHAT THOSE LAWS ACTUALLY DO
RLUIPA (the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act), the ADA, and the Fair Housing Act are anti-discrimination laws. Full stop. They exist to make sure cities can't single out a church, a mosque, a recovery facility, or any protected group and deny them something specifically because of what they are.
That's a good and important purpose. Nobody is arguing those protections shouldn't exist.
BUT HERE IS THE CRITICAL DISTINCTION:
These laws are a shield — not a master key.
They protect organizations from being treated worse than everyone else. They do not grant the right to be treated better than everyone else. They do not suspend zoning codes. They do not eliminate frontage requirements, occupancy classifications, lot access rules, or rezoning processes. They do not give any organization — religious or otherwise — the right to build whatever they want, wherever they want, and call it discrimination if the city says no.
HOW MRM AND THE CITY ARE MISUSING THEM
The city didn't invoke these laws because MRM was being discriminated against. Nobody proposed denying this project because it's faith-based. The opposition is about zoning — wrong building type, wrong lot, wrong classification.
What actually happened is that MRM's team understood that waving RLUIPA in a room full of city officials creates fear. Fear of federal lawsuits. Fear of bad headlines. Fear of being painted as anti-religion or anti-recovery. So they used the laws offensively — as a pressure tactic to pre-justify an approval that the facts on the ground didn't support.
That is precisely backwards from what Congress intended when these laws were written.Anti-discrimination law kicks in when you're being treated unfairly compared to others. It does not kick in simply because the answer is no and you'd prefer yes.
A SIMPLE ANALOGY
Imagine you apply to build a 120-unit apartment complex in a light industrial zone. The city says no — wrong zone, wrong classification, go through rezoning. You can't turn around and say "You're discriminating against renters, and the Fair Housing Act means you have to approve it." That's not how it works. The FHA protects renters from being targeted — it doesn't rewrite zoning law on their behalf.
The exact same logic applies here.
WHY THIS MATTERS BEYOND NEW BERLIN
If this tactic succeeds — if simply invoking RLUIPA is enough to frighten a city into approving a misclassified project on a non-conforming lot without rezoning — it sets a precedent that any faith-based developer can use these laws to bulldoze local land-use decisions anywhere. That's not religious freedom. That's a loophole that guts the entire purpose of community zoning.
Federal judges have repeatedly ruled that RLUIPA does not give religious organizations a right to build anywhere they want, that a city saying "wrong zone" is not religious discrimination, and that legitimate zoning concerns are a complete defense. The law protects against targeted discrimination — it was never meant to be a blank check.
The Board of Appeals has a chance to correct this on June 22nd.
What they're being asked is simple: was this building properly classified? Did the city follow its own rules? The answer to both, based on the evidence, is no.
Don't let the legal language intimidate you. The law is not on MRM's side here — it's just being wielded loudly enough to make it seem that way.
Stay loud. June 22nd. ✊
