Supreme Court Takes Up Kentucky Church Shrine Zoning Case
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Right 50%
1 left · 0 center · 1 right
What happened
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a case brought by the Missionaries of St. John the Baptist, a Catholic church in Park Hills, Kentucky, over its plan to build a roughly 600-square-foot prayer grotto — a shrine to the Virgin Mary with a plaza, walking path, and retaining wall — involving church property and an adjacent parcel. The church applied in March 2021 for a conditional-use permit and variance; the Park Hills Board of Adjustment approved the permit in April 2021. Neighboring property owners Joel and Elizabeth Frederic challenged that approval in Kentucky state court; a trial court ruled for the church, but the Kentucky Court of Appeals reversed, holding that the board exceeded its authority and that there was no violation of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), a 2000 federal law protecting religious institutions from certain land-use burdens, and the Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed the RLUIPA ruling in December 2025. The justices agreed to decide only whether prohibiting a religious institution from building a religious structure on its own property constitutes a “substantial burden” on religious exercise under RLUIPA.
Sourcing check · Mostly on the record · 2 articles
1 of 2 articles cite a named source for the story. It was on the record from the first report.
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Omitted — what each side leaves out
Unpacked
The church's shrine was not blocked by the city board that first heard the request. Left-leaning coverage, in The Hill, describes a Kentucky zoning ordinance that "prohibited" a Catholic church from building a shrine next to its property. Right-leaning coverage reports that the Park Hills Board of Adjustment approved the permit, after which neighboring owners took the fight to state court. That omitted sequence recasts the dispute from a government ban into a neighbor challenge of a local approval.
National reach shows up only in right-leaning coverage. Right-leaning coverage, through Fox News, opens on an attorney's claim that the case could affect "every single zoning law" nationwide. Left-leaning coverage leads only with the justices agreeing to hear a Kentucky shrine dispute and never states a national land-use stake.
Why did Kentucky's appellate courts conclude the board exceeded its authority?
Bottom line
The Hill never mentions the Park Hills approval, so its readers still meet the story as a city ordinance that barred a shrine rather than a neighbor lawsuit after a local yes.
The receipts — 4 facts one side's coverage lacks
- The Supreme Court agreed to hear only whether prohibiting a religious institution from building a religious structure on its own property is a substantial burden under RLUIPA.
- The proposed grotto would have a roughly 600-square-foot footprint.
- The proposed grotto involved an adjacent parcel subject to a perpetual lease that would transfer to the church as a condition of approval.
- The church building has stood on the property for nearly a century and predates Park Hills' 1974 zoning ordinance.
The Left View
The Hill frames the matter as a zoning dispute in which the Court will decide “whether a local zoning ordinance in Kentucky that prohibited a Catholic church from building a religious shrine next to its property is legal.” That account presents the grant of review chiefly as a question of the ordinance’s legality, not as a nationwide religious-liberty showdown.
The Right View
Fox News, quoting Ryan Gardner of First Liberty Institute, which represents the church, calls this “a massive case for religious liberty” with “the potential to impact every single zoning law in this country.” Gardner places RLUIPA “at the intersection of two very critical rights in this country: the rights of religious liberty and property rights,” argues that lower courts have taken different approaches since 2000, and says the Court can set a clearer national standard; he warns that an overly narrow reading could have “dire consequences” for churches, synagogues, ministries, and other groups using their land for worship, and likens the grotto’s footprint to a swimming pool. Fox also reports the church’s claim of a split over “substantial burden,” and the Frederics’ reply that courts generally weigh similar factors, that outcomes track different facts, and that the Missionaries did not show alternative locations were unavailable.
Our Take (balanced)
The right’s strongest argument is that uneven lower-court tests for RLUIPA’s “substantial burden” standard leave religious landowners with unequal federal protection, so this case could reshape zoning nationwide — a claim Gardner ties to an asserted post-2000 doctrinal split and to the statute’s pairing of religious exercise with property rights, plus the modest scale of the proposed shrine. Left-leaning coverage’s strongest framing is that the live issue is simply whether the local ordinance that barred the shrine is legal: an ordinary land-use controversy, not a national religious-liberty emergency. The Frederics’ opposition, as reported on the right, adds that the church failed to show other sites were unavailable. The central unresolved tension is what “substantial burden” means when zoning stops a religious structure on church land — whether that denial is itself a federal injury to religious exercise, or a routine municipal judgment unless no alternative location exists.
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