The Salt Lake City Mission opened in 1996 to provide religious services and temporal resources to homeless and needy person suffering from addition problems. The Mission moved from its original location and considered a number of relocation properties in Salt Lake City, five of which required a conditional use permit (CUP). The Mission claimed the City prevented it from applying for the CUP in four locations and in the fifth location the planning commission denied their application. The Mission did not appeal the denial, but rather filed a lawsuit against the City alleging that the City violated the Mission’s right to free exercise of religion under the state and federal constitutions. The District Court dismissed the claims because the Mission had not exhausted its administrative remedies and because its federal claims were not ripe.
Utah State statutes provide, in part, “No person may challenge in district court a municipality’s land use decision…until that person has exhausted the person’s administrative remedies…” See, Utah Code Ann. §10-9a-801(1) (Supp. 2007). Because the Mission failed to follow the City’s process of appealing the planning commission’s denial to the Land Use Appeals Board within thirty days (see Slat Lake City, Utah, City Code §21A.54.160), the Supreme Court held that the Mission failed to exhaust its administrative remedies. Further, the Court noted that with respect to the Mission’s claims that the City prevented them from submitting applications for CUPs for the first properties, the Court said, “a party cannot claim that they have exhausted their administrative remedies before even an attempt to file and application as been made, absent truly extraordinary circumstances, which are not present in this case.” The Court found that the Mission failed to establish that the City’s actions caused it irreparable injury by restricting its constitutional right to the free exercise of religion, and they did not establish that the City’s actions were oppressive and unjust.
Turning to the federal ripeness issue, the Supreme Court cited with approval the Second Circuit’s opinion, Murphy v. New Milford Zoning Comm’n, 402 F.3d 432 (2d Cir. 2005), which held that in land use cases, an applicant “was required to obtain a final, definitive position…from the entity charged with implementing the zoning regulations.” Since the Mission failed to obtain a final decision on any of the five properties, and it offered no compelling reason why obtaining such decision would be unfair or unreasonable, the Court said its federal constitutional claims were not ripe.
Salt Lake City Mission v. Salt Lake City, 2008 WL 1787677 (Utah 4/22/2008).
The opinion can be accessed at: http://www.utcourts.gov/opinions/supopin/SLCMission042208.pdf
Categories:
