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Alignment is each justice's general judicial philosophy as commonly described, not a party. Justices don't belong to parties, and they don't always vote with their bloc.
Alignment is each justice's general judicial philosophy as commonly described, not a party. Justices don't belong to parties, and they don't always vote with their bloc.
No. 25-1131 · October Term 2026
Does a zoning ordinance that prevents a religious organization from building a religious shrine on its own chosen property impose a burden on religious practice significant enough to trigger federal land-use protections?
Missionaries of Saint John the Baptist, Inc. is a nonprofit Roman Catholic organization that owns a church in Park Hills, Kentucky, a suburb of Cincinnati. The church was built in 1930 and sits in a residential zone, where it operates as a grandfathered nonconforming use. The organization sought to build a grotto honoring the Virgin Mary on a lot it acquired adjacent to the church. The proposed grotto — approximately 16 feet by 39 feet — would include a shrine, a plaza, a walking path, and a retaining wall built into the hillside. The organization holds that its faith requires the shrine to stand next to the church, grounded in the reported apparition at Lourdes, France in 1858, in which the Virgin Mary instructed that a chapel be built beside the grotto. The Park Hills zoning ordinance allows churches to obtain a conditional-use permit only if they sit on an arterial street — a main road that carries major traffic flows through the community. Neither the church nor the adjacent lot sits on an arterial street. The ordinance does not impose the same condition on many other property uses, including publicly owned parks, golf courses, country clubs, nursery schools, and libraries.…
From Oyez.