Attorneys with Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe and Alliance Defending Freedom filed their opening merits brief at the U.S. Supreme Court Monday on behalf of a devout Orthodox Jew suing the city of University Heights, Ohio after officials required him to obtain a permit to pray in his home with a small group of friends. The Supreme Court agreed to hear Daniel Grand’s case after lower federal courts threw out his lawsuit and said he needed to finish the permitting process before vindicating his constitutional rights.
“No American needs a permit to pray. When government officials require a permit to host a prayer gathering in one’s home, courts must hold those individuals accountable, immediately,” said ADF Senior Counsel and Vice President of Appellate Advocacy John Bursch. “The city’s actions underscore a troubling trend of weaponizing zoning laws against people of faith while allowing other gatherings of the same size, like book clubs or poker nights, to meet without issue. We urge the Supreme Court to uphold Mr. Grand’s right to vindicate his First Amendment freedoms.”
In January 2021, Grand e-mailed about a dozen friends to invite them to his home to pray as a minyan, a “threshold requirement for the most sacred acts of Jewish communal worship,” that upcoming Sabbath. But when city officials found out about the e-mail, and before any minyan convened, the city demanded that Grand “immediately cease and desist any and all” uses of his home as a “place of religious assembly” unless he first obtained a special use permit, which the city requires for houses of worship in residential districts.
The brief filed in Grand v. City of University Heights explains how the mayor called Grand to deliver the message personally: “You are under no circumstances allowed to have any type of religious gathering in your home without first obtaining a special use permit.”
City officials targeted Grand because of his religious practice. He was never trying to make his private home a synagogue; he was simply hosting a prayer gathering with friends. Yet city officials ordered police to spy on Grand’s home and encouraged his neighbors to file complaints if anyone visited. The city then issued unfounded property violations, unlawfully withheld his certificate of occupancy and tax abatements—which cost him thousands of dollars in additional taxes—regularly failed to collect his trash, and engaged in a broader pattern of harassment.
Grand canceled his planned minyan and tried to comply with the city’s directive by submitting a permit application. But neighbors opposed the permit, protesting, “I am not Jewish, and I do not want our neighborhood labeled as Jewish.” The city then broadcast a public hearing marked by overt hostility to Grand’s religious practice.
When Grand filed a lawsuit, federal courts closed their doors because Grand had not completed the permitting process—even though successfully obtaining a permit may have required Grand and his family to leave their home.
