Muslim community members suing the Town of Oyster Bay in Nassau County for alleged religious discrimination have received some added ammunition: a statement of support from the U.S. Department of Justice.
The DOJ submitted a statement backing claims by Muslims on Long Island Inc. (MOLI) that the town violated the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act when it denied the organization’s site plans to expand its current facility into a modern mosque.
The claim under the act, which prohibits local governments from imposing more onerous requirements on religious organizations than nonreligious enterprises, asks the U.S. District Court to preliminarily enjoin Oyster Bay from relying on more stringent land-use requirements enacted in 2022.
“MOLI is treated less favorably than comparable secular uses such as theaters, libraries, and museums, and the Town cannot and does not show that such unequal treatment is justified,” read the DOJ statement, signed by U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District John J. Durham, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon, and Deputy Assistant Attorney General Michael E. Gates.
An attorney representing the town did not respond to questions about the DOJ’s statement but told Newsday that the lawsuit was “baseless.”
Peter Vogel, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in an interview that a hearing on the preliminary injunction is scheduled for May 15, where he said the plaintiffs would ask for permission to construct the mosque.
“The DOJ’s Statement of Interest underscores the fundamental principle that religious freedom must be protected equally, and that municipalities cannot impose burdens on houses of worship that they do not impose on secular entities,” said Vogel, who is with the law firm Linklaters in New York.
According to the lawsuit, filed in January in the Eastern District of New York, MOLI and Muslim residents in Bethpage, Nassau County, had spent six years attempting to upgrade “their modest mosque” into a modern house of worship.
“The Town had different plans,” according to the complaint. “It first subjected MOLI to an unprecedented level of scrutiny and resistance not faced by other religious and secular organizations, imposing arbitrary and onerous demands that delayed the process by years.”
The organization has occupied the location since 1998, according to the complaint, but decided to build a larger house of worship on site as the number of worshippers grew.
According to the lawsuit, the town in 2022 demanded that the project significantly increase the number of parking spaces to “nearly double what was required under the standard in place when MOLI first submitted its site plan to the Town.”
The community, plaintiff Moeen Qureshi said in an interview with Gothamist, had endured anti-Muslim abuse in the process of attempting to build the mosque.
Qureshi said the community is “as American as it gets.”
“ Unfortunately it's a religious entity that's managed by Muslims,” Qureshi said. “That doesn't fly with a lot of folks.”
