Baptist church claims religious discrimination after border town shuts down food ministry

PHOENIX (CN) — A federal judge will likely decline to dismiss a lawsuit challenging a city action to halt a Baptist church’s food ministry program on the Arizona-Mexico border. 

The city of San Luis, Arizona — situated in the southeastern portion of Yuma County near California and Mexico — argued in a Phoenix courtroom Thursday that a legal challenge under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 is only ripe if a jurisdiction has issued a final determination on whether the land use in question is in violation of local law.

And because Gethsemane Baptist Church hasn't received a written determination, the city says it can’t challenge the enforcement actions that forced the church to stop feeding as many as 200 families each Saturday.

But U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow called the suggestion “nonsensical.” 

During oral arguments Thursday afternoon, Cameron Artigue — an attorney with Gammage and Burnham representing the city — claimed the church no longer retains the legal nonconforming status it obtained in 2012 after the area was rezoned because its operation has expanded outside the scope of what the city allowed in 2012.

To continue the operation, the church must apply for a conditional use permit. Only after the city makes a final decision on the permit application can the church bring a Religious Land Act challenge, Artigue said. 

“You’re saying that before we determine whether they’ve expanded, you want them to apply for a conditional use permit for expansion?” Snow asked Artigue. “That’s nonsensical.” 

He later added that asking the church to apply for a conditional use permit to do something the city has already determined to be illegal “doesn’t make any sense.”

Artigue told the George W. Bush appointee that the city hasn’t even made a final determination as to whether the church has expanded operations, and the question is a matter of local rather than federal law.

“Are you saying this court is incapable of coming to such a decision?” Snow asked the attorney. 

“No. I’m not saying that at all.” Artigue answered.

“Are you saying this case is not entirely clear?” Snow said.

“It’s not clear to me,” Artigue answered.

“I don’t really care what’s clear to you,” Snow said.

The church argues that the addition of a semi-truck to transport higher volumes of food doesn’t constitute an expansion of its operation, and the claims in the complaint are taken as true in the motion to dismiss stage. 

On behalf of Gethsemane Baptist Church, Charlene Warner of Snell and Wilmer law firm argued that an application for a conditional use permit isn’t necessary because the city has already made a final determination by revoking its legal nonconforming use status and taking enforcement actions against it.

Warner said the church tried to appeal the decision and received no response, which legally establishes a denial, which she says is a final decision. 

Noah Sacks with the U.S. Department of Justice, which sides with the church in this case, added that the use of police power to issue citations and stop the church’s actions also establishes a final decision. 

“If it’s not, I don’t know what is,” Sacks told Snow. 

Artigue rebutted that no final decision has been put in writing, and the only way to make that happen is through an application for a conditional use permit.

Snow told Artigue that he’s “completely unpersuaded,” by that argument. Because the crux of the challenge is whether the church expanded its operations, Snow said that determination must be made first. 

Gethsemane Baptist Church, which sits in the middle of a residential area just a few blocks from the border, has operated a free food ministry since 1999, feeding families in San Luis, Yuma City, Mexico and California. The city of San Luis first authorized the continuation of the operation in the form of a legal nonconforming use status when it rezoned the land the church sits on to “residential” in 2012.

But soon after a new mayor was elected in 2022, the city sent multiple letters to the church informing it that the distribution of “commercial amounts” of food and the use of a semi-truck to bring the food from a warehouse to the church parking lot violates the residential zoning ordinance.

The city cited the church and its pastor, Jose Manuel Castro, multiple times, including once in February after Castro gave a “small amount of food” to a group of ten people, according to the church's complaint filed against the city in March after it halted operations in fear of criminal prosecution. 

The church claims that the enforcement of the zoning ordinance violates the Religious Land Use Act by curtailing the church from feeding and clothing the needy — both core tenets of Christianity.

The church also claims unequal treatment, including in the complaint photos of commercial vehicles like semis, food trucks and delivery trucks parked in residential neighborhoods for hours or days at a time without similar zoning enforcements. 

Snow said he'll issue a ruling as soon as possible.

Follow @JournalistJoeAZ