The U.S. Supreme Court will not weigh in on a longstanding conflict between the Boulder County Board of Commissioners and Rocky Mountain Christian Church in Niwot, county officials confirmed Monday.
The conflict between the church and the county began in 2006 when the church asked to nearly double the size of its 128,000-square-foot campus. The commissioners denied the request, arguing that the expansion would be incompatible with the area’s rural character.
In response, Rocky Mountain Christian Church sued the county, claiming the commissioners had violated the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act and the U.S. Constitution.
In 2008, after a two-week trial in U.S. District Court, a jury delivered a confusing verdict, finding both that the county had violated RLUIPA — by treating the church on “less than equal terms” compared with secular institutions and by placing “unreasonable limitations” on its ability to expand — and that the county did not violate the U.S. Constitution, since it did not discriminate against the church based on religion.
In 2009, using the jury verdict as a guide, U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn ruled that the church could expand the full amount that it originally requested when it filed a land-use application in 2006, which would bring the campus to 240,000 square feet.
The commissioners appealed Blackburn’s ruling, but in 2010, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled again in favor of Rocky Mountain Christian Church, agreeing that the commissioners had violated RLUIPA.
The commissioners voted in September to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court.
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