Mr. CANADY. Thank you, Professor.

I want to thank all of the members of this panel for your very helpful testimony. I think we have had a good cross-section of opinion on these very important issues. Each of you have made a significant contribution to the considerations of the subcommittee, and we thank you for taking the time to be with us today.

We will now go to our second panel.

Mr. CANADY. I want to thank the members of the second panel for joining us today. Our first witness on the second and concluding panel of today will be Mr. John Mauck. Mr. Mauck is an attorney with the law firm of Mauck, Bellande & Cheely in Chicago, Illinois. And I apologize to your partners if I have mispronounced their

names.

Finally, we will hear from Professor Cole Durham of Brigham Young University Law School. We appreciate your participation in the hearing today.

We would ask that you do your best to summarize your testimony in 5 minutes or less. Without objection your full written statement will be made part of the permanent hearing record. Observing the proceedings thus far this morning, you will note that we are not strictly enforcing the 5-minute rule.

Again, we thank you.

Mr. Mauck.

STATEMENT OF JOHN MAUCK, ATTORNEY, MAUCK, BELLANDE & CHEELY, CHICAGO, IL

Mr. MAUCK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My practice has been involved in land use, so I would like to confine my testimony to the land use aspects of the bill before you.

Churches come in all sizes and shapes. You may be aware that there are megachurches now along with house churches, groups of 5 and 10 and 15 people that meet in homes and storefronts. Churches come in many sizes and shapes. They come also in many religious denominations, but there is an overlapping ethnic and racial aspect, churches that group along ethnic lines, such as Korean, Hispanic, Afro-Americans, Albanian Orthodox, and as been talking about the power to regulate, I think we should realize that this is substantially and often a racial and ethnic issue as well as a religious issue.

I am involved particularly in zoning applications for churches and would like to tell the committee about a number of times that churches have been discriminated against in attempts to obtain zoning permits.

I represented one Hispanic church that attempted to get a permit in a suburb of Chicago. The mayor told the city manager, "We don't want Spics in this town." The only reason that I know that is that the city manager went to his priest and asked what to do, and the priest said, "you are going to have to risk your job. What you are being asked to do is evil." The city manager came and told me and he lost his job about a week later.

In the Marquette Park area of Chicago, which is a traditionally white area where Martin Luther King marched and was pelted a number of years ago, there is a dividing line called Western Avenue. It is a commercial street. To the east of Western Avenue is

almost entirely Afro-American, and to the west is almost entirely Caucasian. Faith Cathedral, an Afro-American church, purchased a funeral parlor about 100 feet west of Western Avenue. It was not on the commercial area, but it abutted the commercial area and residential area. They planned to use this funeral parlor as a place of worship. It had adequate parking. It had a chapel. It was set up for the type of assembly use that churches need.

It was also the biggest crowd that I have ever seen at a zoning hearing in the city of Chicago. There were probably some 30 white people there from the community objecting. And the zoning board turned down the application. The zoning board did not have to give a specific reason. They can say it is not in the general welfare, or they can say that you are taking property off the tax rolls. Most zoning statutes have large discretion to the city in determining whether to issue a permit. The zoning board would never say, we are turning you down because you are Afro-American, but I don't think that they had to in that case at least to convince me that racism motivated the turn down in some way.

In downtown Chicago there has not been a new church built in 20 to 25 years. There are large existing churches, but I have an Afro-American church client that tried to locate between the United Center, where the Bulls play, and the Loop, and where there is about an 8- to 10-block stretch that is developing. The reason they wanted to locate there was to provide a church for AfroAmericans, particularly young professionals. New churches have been shut out of the loop, as I said, except for the traditional churches that have been there for a long time. And the city did not want any churches in that area to gum up their planned commercial development.

The church then went to another area nearby, across from the Presbyterian Administration Building, and they were told by the city, "we might want to make this into a night club district, and your presence would interfere with our development.'

Finally, the church moved down to the south side and found a funeral home. And the city said, fine, you can move there. It was an all Afro-American neighborhood, and I think the city was glad to be rid of a pesky challenge.

A small group of 20 Hispanic believers attempted to buy a building in the city of Chicago that was a formerly a florist shop, and the alderman didn't want them in the neighborhood, and so he changed that floral shop into a manufacturing zone. A 25-foot by 125-foot piece of land became a manufacturing zone.

A Vineyard Church attempted to buy a theater, one of these 1920 art deco theaters, and they were going to make that into their assembly hall and worship facility. The alderman changed that into an manufacturing zone.

A Currency Exchange on the south side of Chicago, a church attempted to buy that, and while their application for permit was pending, the alderman decided let's make that into a manufacturing zone.

These laws can be abused. Some of the cases were litigated, but I think you need to understand that in the area of land use, judicial remedies often are not available. The churches don't have the money, or the municipalities can wait them out because a church

has a choice of buying a building that it can't use or having to carry the expense and pay the mortgage every month, if it can get a mortgage, on a building that it can't use, or walking away. To continue and then sue the city and force them to allow you to use the building can take 3 or 4 years, and often it is not possible. So the cases reported in the legal system are just the tip of the iceberg. Discrimination is all over the place, and there is good reason to remedy that.

The Religious Liberty Protection Act proposes three solutions which I think are reasonable. One is that there be equal protection; wherever you allow a secular assembly, why not allow a religious assembly? Why discriminate on the basis of the content of the discussion that is going on? If there is allowed a meeting hall discussing great books, why not allow a religious assembly discussing the Bible?

The second problem is that many cities have ordinances that do not allow churches freely anywhere within the city. They must get a permit to get into the city. And this is not true, of course, of residential uses or commercial uses or many other types of uses. They all have choice where to locate. But in approximately half of all city ordinances that I have read, and this would be across the country because my practice ranges across the country, approximately half of the ordinances I see do not have any zone where a church can freely go. They must get a special use permit which requires a public hearing and public approval to permit those churches to go in, and there is a real Establishment of Religion problem here because municipalities decide what churches they want, what folks they want in their community.

And municipalities also need the help of a Federal law too so that they will be not be inundated with religious uses. Certain communities have had very easy access to churches and found that a lot of churches come to them because other communities put up high barriers. Those communities with low barriers are suddenly fearful that they are going to get too many churches, and so they put their barriers up higher. So these communities have to compete against each other and worry that if they don't have a higher barrier, they are going to be inundated with tax-exempt uses.

But the Federal Government is in a unique position to say, because of these fears in the community, we are going to have an across-the-board law that is the same for everyone, and then communities won't have to have fears about raising higher barriers to keep churches out.

Mr. CANADY. Thank you, Mr. Mauck. [The information referred to follows:]

59-929 00-4

Religious Liberty Protection Act

Tales from the Front: Municipal Control of Religious Expression
Through Zoning Ordinances

Testimony of the Experience of Attorney John

I am an attorney who has been practicing law in Chicago for 25 years. My representation of churches began in 1978, primarily with regard to church zoning and real estate matters. Since 1978 I have represented approximately 150 churches in Chicago and around the country. In response to the growing difficulties faced by churches in securing properties, I founded Civil Liberties for Urban Believers (C.L.U.B.) in 1992. C.L.U.B. is an organization of churches dedicated to changing zoning laws, which prevent churches from securing adequate permanent locations for the exercise of their religious beliefs.

In addition to the outline which I submitted in connection with my testimony in support of the Religious Liberty Protection Act, I would also like to summarize the highlights of my experience in representing churches in their disputes with municipalities employing land use restrictions:

1. Family Christian Center v. County of Winnebego (Rockford, Illinois)

A church purchased a former school building for religious activities. One remark by a neighbor which was reported to us was "let's keep these [G. D.] Pentecostals out of here." Although the church met all zoning criteria, a judge inflamed with prejudice against churches based on negative publicity surrounding television preachers denied the church the right to use the school building. In rendering his decision, he stated "we don't want twelve story prayer towers in Rockford." Of course the church had not applied to build anything much less a 12 story tower. Apparently the judge was referring to the 12-story prayer tower at Oral Roberts University and had, outside of court, discovered the loose affiliation between the church and Oral Roberts University. Despite the church's clear entitlement to the building, it had to expend enormous amounts of money for attorney's fees and costs for a trial and appeal and sustained severe emotional distress before securing the facility.

A small Afro-American church of about 20 spent several years attempting to rent a facility for worship. The City of Evanston had no zones where churches were allowed. Landlords refused to take their property off the market on the chance that the church could eventually get a permit. Despite the substantial burden of having no regular meeting place to the congregation over many years, the Seventh Circuit dismissed the case for lack of standing and the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari.

3. Grace Community Church v. Town of Bethel

Bethel ("House of God"), Connecticut was chartered in 1750 so that the local residents could build a church. By 1990, churches were not a permitted use anywhere in the town. A church was denied the right to build on 7 acres of land it had owned for 10 years despite a Connecticut Constitutional right to build churches. The church was ultimately able to build after years of costly litigation.

4. Ira Iglesia de la Biblia Abierta v. City of Chicago

A Hispanic congregation of about 30 tried to buy a storefront floral shop to convert to a church. It applied for a permit to use the facility. While its permit was pending, the Alderman changed the zoning classification of the single storefront to "manufacturing" so that the church could not obtain a permit under any circumstances. There is probable racial and ethnic bias behind the city's action. A case challenging the action is pending in federal court.

5. C.L.U.B. v. City of Chicago

The aforementioned association of churches is currently challenging the constitutionality of the Chicago Zoning Ordinance in federal court.

6.

Living Word Outreach v. City of Chicago Heights (Chicago Heights, Illinois)

The city denied a congregation of 70 the right to use a building for worship which had been a Masonic Temple for 40 years. The Masons had been 99% Caucasian and the church was 99% Afro-American. It appeared that the church was denied the right to use the building because it was in the predominantly white side of town. The Trial court ruled in favor of the church after costly legal maneuverings by the City which put the church in number of different courts. The case is now on appeal.