Dept. of Justice targets small Idaho town over zoning dispute with extremist church

Pastor Doug Wilson’s controversial church claims religious bias, but Troy leaders say it's about zoning, not zealotry

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The U.S. Department of Justice has just filed a federal lawsuit against a small Idaho town that said a Christian hate-church couldn’t set up shop in its business district. While the church crowd says this is religious persecution, the town’s leaders insist this isn’t some anti-Christian move but rather a fairly straightforward application of what it does and doesn’t allow in a retail space meant to revitalize the community.

The reason this is controversial is mostly because we’re talking about Pastor Doug Wilson and Christ Church. They’re based in Moscow, Idaho, where the cult-like group has been spreading like a weed. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth of “leaked Signal chat” fame is a member of one of its affiliates.

Pastor Doug Wilson (screenshot via YouTube)

This is a place that held a massive, indoor, maskless service for over a thousand people in July of 2020, in the thick of the pandemic and well before vaccines were available. (Members of the church staged a protest outside City Hall that year in opposition to local COVID restrictions.)

This is a place where a church staffer once tweeted to men, “Make sure your wife votes exactly as you do.”

Wilson has said that allowing women to vote means “taking it away from families.”

A VICE article about the church’s inner workings found that “women are told they must defer to church leaders and cannot say ‘no’ to their husbands, men are taught to strictly control their homes, and those who speak out can be isolated and harassed.”

He has also said sodomy is “worse than slavery” and that abortion is “as great an evil as slavery.”

More recently, Wilson announced plans to plant a church in Washington, D.C. so he could be even closer to the politicians he wants to influence.

Anyway, a few years ago, his church had only about 900 members in a town of 25,000 people, but it was still a significant number. It’s grown since then and they’ve been trying to expand, both in membership and locations. One of the ways they tried to do that is by setting up a church in nearby Troy, about 15 minutes east of Moscow.

But that’s where they hit a snag.

In September of 2022, they rented out space in a local bar on Sunday mornings to hold services. By October, the city told them they couldn’t do that because they needed a Conditional Use Permit (CUP) given that this was a commercial zoning district. (It was a place of business. Anything else needed special permission.)

So in November, a church leader purchased a building that had previously been a bank (in the center of the image below).

Site of Ye Olde Bank (screenshot via Google Maps)

That old bank held enough space for an office and a makeshift church. The way the lease was set up, Christ Church would use the space on Sundays but would also coordinate with the landlord so that other groups could use the space the rest of the week (assuming there was no conflict with the church).

But in order to use that space, they still needed a permit from the city, which meant a public hearing would be held.

The townspeople showed up in person to oppose the move. After all, many of them said, this was a divisive group that would alienate others from coming to the city. (Of the 19 people who spoke at the January 2023 hearing, 17 opposed the permit. The town’s attorney told me only one or two people even mentioned religion as the basis for their opposition and they were told by the town’s leaders that religion would not be considered in their decision.)

There were also written objections submitted, saying things like “As a community, we do not need a hate group in our town” and “Between misogynistic ideology, shady business practices, and reports of marital assault being brushed under the rug by higher ups, I see no reason to allow this permit to move forward.” (Of the 32 written submissions, 26 opposed the permit. Again, there’s no reason to believe these comments about the group’s beliefs influenced the city’s leaders.)

But taking everything into consideration, the city council voted in March of 2023 to deny the permit. The city said very clearly that the reason was that the church “did not enhance the commercial district,” not for any religious reasons. But they added that if the group wanted to use the church as office space or other qualified reasons, they could. They also claimed that giving the church the permit would create an “imposition” on local residents and businesses due to “parking and traffic.” (The church saw this as religious discrimination because other groups that were not retail shops were allowed to apply for the same permit.)

Another problem? The city said Idaho law prohibits alcohol sales within 300 feet of a church. If you put a church in a business district, then, it would necessarily prohibit them from giving a permit to a future bar/restaurant that wanted to open up in that part of town. (That’s also true of schools, which were allowed in that area, though there were no schools in that part of town when the city sent that letter.)

They also cited the public opposition to the church.

They concluded:

… [the] City of Troy welcomes any church to our community; however, the decision of the City Council is that the CUP application must be denied as the proposed use of the property for purposes of a church in the commercial zone of the City is against the will of the people and will have a negative effect on the City’s ability to grow its business community.

It’s not a strange position to take. If you want your city to grow and the presence of one particular group in the dead center of town could prevent that from happening, the city has the right to reject the request.

In April of 2023, the church formally appealed the decision, saying it was illegal. They specifically said the denial violated the Religious Land Use and Incarcerated Persons Act (RLUIPA), a federal law that, among other things, protects houses of worship from zoning discrimination.

The city’s attorney responded that it was not illegal, so local leaders denied the appeal. The church could have taken the issue to Idaho courts. Instead, they went directly to the feds.

And that’s when the Department of Justice (under the Biden Administration) said it would investigate the matter.

The city’s attorney Todd Richardson later said in a public Facebook post that there was no discrimination taking place here. Of the various churches that exist in the city, he said, none were in the “C-1 Central Business” zone, which is where Christ Church wanted to be. The city wanted to maintain “approximately two blocks” in the center of town for commercial space—retail stores and the like—which was within their right. So while the DoJ could investigate, and while the city would cooperate, he didn’t believe they had done anything wrong.

Richardson added: “During the period of the investigation… the City does not plan on taking legal action against Christ Church of Troy for its violation of the City zoning ordinance.” So the church continued (and still continues) meeting there.

That investigation was still ongoing as of this year. But in April, the city was told it was under investigation by the Trump administration for potential RLUIPA violations.

That’s when local officials stepped in. Last month, the city council enacted an interim ordinance officially saying non-retail businesses and local groups would no longer be allowed in that two-block stretch meant to be a centralized business district. It was a way to enforce what they had loosely said in the past. While non-business groups like unions, schools, libraries, etc. had previously been allowed to set up shop in that area (with permission), the ordinance said that would no longer be the case. Some pre-existing places might be grandfathered in, but no new non-retail developments would be allowed in that space.

The goal? To “provide a consistent and proper framework for future growth.”

In short, the city wanted retail stores to be on that prime stretch of land, not local groups. Not even hotels. So art galleries and grocery stores might be okay, but new museums and schools—and churches—would not be. It was a way to make sure the business district was walkable and never a stress due to the lack of off-street parking.

But now the Department of Justice has filed a full-blown RLUIPA lawsuit against the city of Troy.

“RLUIPA unequivocally forbids local governments from deciding zoning matters based on their dislike of certain religious groups,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “The Department of Justice will not hesitate to file suit against jurisdictions that discriminate in land use matters on the basis of the applicants’ religious beliefs.”

The lawsuit alleges that the City’s denial of the CUP imposed a substantial burden on Christ Church and was based on the community’s discriminatory animus against the Church. It also alleges that the City’s zoning code treats religious assembly use worse than nonreligious assembly use. The lawsuit alleges violations of RLUIPA’s substantial burden, equal terms, and discrimination provisions.

The statement is absurd, though. This isn’t about the “dislike of certain religious groups.” The city didn’t change its local rules to spite one particular church. They merely noted that community members opposed the church, but offered secular reasons to say no to all kinds of non-commercial spaces. It’s not like a mainstream Protestant church is allowed in the business district but Christ Church is prohibited. It’s also not like religious groups are treated worse than non-religious groups.

Like so many things with this administration, it’s possible that the goal of this legal filing is to generate headlines more than anything. The arguments may be weak, but the Trump administration can tell gullible Republican voters that they’re fighting on behalf of a church.

Troy attorney Todd Richardson implied as much in a Facebook post Thursday, saying that the alleged facts were “simply wrong”:

Unfortunately, the facts claimed by the feds are simply wrong; I suspect this will be a fight. The town and the people of Troy are being unfairly and dishonestly characterized as fighting against a church, when what they ARE doing is trying to preserve a TWO BLOCK business district that is to be a "turn of the century" walking business/commercial center for the town. The rest of the City is open and welcoming to any church.

He was even more blunt in a statement to a local media outlet:

The City of Troy denies that it discriminated against anyone.

The permit was not denied because they were any particular church but because the demand they put on our scarce city resources.

The church meets multiple times a week on a street that has no off-street parking. They fill up the downtown parking and they flood the residential area.

We have worked for two years with the Department of Justice trying to negotiate an agreement. We learned more about the DOJ's position when they filed that complaint than when we did in the two years prior.

There’s no reason Christ Church can’t find space anywhere else in the city. There are other churches in the community not within that small business district and there’s no problem with them whatsoever.

There’s also no reason people in Troy can’t drive 15 minutes to Moscow to attend one of the church’s other locations. This is all about pressuring a nearby community into submission. It’s a flex of power by the extremist group and their allies in the federal government. It’s something judges should consider as they dismiss these charges altogether.

Richardson told me over the phone that he, too, believed this was about getting attention but added this was “an act of bullying by the federal government.”

Doug Wilson’s name and Christ Church never came up in our conversation. They were irrelevant, really, to the bigger issues at hand. Richardson said he’s been working with the feds for two years trying to resolve all this. Despite him explaining the situation to the government’s lawyers, they never told him what changes would resolve the problem. He asked. They wouldn’t give him a direct answer. It wasn’t until the lawsuit was filed that he finally understood the Justice Department’s position. He called it “an exercise in great frustration.”

He even said all this to the Department of Justice earlier this month in a letter he shared with me,

The City has repeatedly expressed an interest in working with your office toward a resolution; however, your office has consistently and flatly refused to provide any information to the City or to discuss in any detail what problems you claim and refused to discuss resolution. It is not the City that has been slow to agree to work on this issue and toward a resolution.

…

The City has repeatedly expressed a desire to work with the Civil Rights Division to resolve this issue. It has repeatedly requested a cooperative exchange of information to that end but to date those requests have not resulted in any explanation or demonstration of the constitutional violations referenced in your letter. The City maintains their desire to cooperate with you and is certainly open to continuing pre-suit discussions which we hope will lead to a meaningful negotiated resolution of this issue.

The Department of Justice ignored his requests, then sued the city anyway.

Richardson laid out for me the main concern for the city, specifically against the charge that an event center would be allowed in the business district but Christ Church would not be (and that’s why it’s religious discrimination). He explained that for a small town like Troy, there are about 6-10 “large” events a year that might bring about 50 people to the city’s center, which is quite a lot in any small town. What Christ Church wants to do is bring 80-150 people to their building, multiple times a week. It would flood the zone, so to speak, while overflowing into the neighboring residential area. It would also make it that much harder for other people to enjoy the business district when church was in session. Where would they even park? In essence, the main artery of the city would be clogged up whenever Christ Church held a service, and the city had an obligation to make sure that didn’t happen.

It’s unclear what happens next. Both sides could settle this case before a judge weighs in on the merits, but that would require Christ Church to accept certain restrictions on what they can do with the space they’re demanding within a business district.

The bottom line, Richardson said, is that “we have the law on our side.” That didn’t mean they wouldn’t be open to negotiation. It’s not about any religious differences, though. He made clear this was about making sure Troy remained a “wonderful vibrant community.”

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