I. Monetary Damages Are "appropriate Relief" Under Rluipa

I. Monetary Damages Are "Appropriate Relief" Under RLUIPA

RLUIPA's provision that authorizes a cause of action states that "[a] person may assert a violation of this chapter as a claim or defense in a judicial proceeding and obtain appropriate relief against a government."¹ The statute broadly defines the term "government" to include the following:

i. a State, county, municipality, or other governmental entity created under the authority of a State;
ii. any branch, department, agency, instrumentality, or official of an entity listed in clause (i); and
iii. any other person acting under color of State law.²

While the phrase "appropriate relief" may seem simple enough, these two words have turned out to be more problematic than one would imagine. Following are some examples of the different forms of relief that various courts have deemed "appropriate" under RLUIPA.

It is a familiar canon of statutory construction that "[i]n the absence of contrary indication, we assume that when a statute uses . . . a term [of art], Congress intended it to have its established meaning."³ However, courts have had trouble agreeing upon the established meaning of "appropriate relief" within the context of RLUIPA; as one court put it mildly, "there is a division of authority" on whether "appropriate relief" encompasses monetary damages.⁴ The federal district courts are currently split: some courts conclude that RLUIPA does not encompass money damages, while others have found the opposite, concluding that the phrase "appropriate relief" is sufficiently broad to include some forms of monetary relief. Meanwhile, a third category of interpretation has developed in some district courts that have assumed that monetary relief is available without resolving the disputed definition of "appropriate relief."⁵

This current conflict among district courts regarding the availability of money damages stems from the issues inherently involved in claimants suing governmental officials in their individual capacities—a sphere that federal courts appear to be hesitant to let claimants near, let alone expand. Likewise, claims of punitive damages against municipalities under RLUIPA are questioned given that the U.S. Supreme Court has concluded that punitive damages are not available against municipalities and officials sued in their official capacity in 42 U.S.C. § 1983 cases.⁶

The term "appropriate relief" has a well-established meaning summed up in the U.S. Supreme Court's seminal decision in Franklin v. Gwinnett County Public Schools.⁷ There, the Court defined "appropriate relief" under Title IX to include monetary damages,⁸ based on the federal courts' traditional authority to fashion broad remedies for violations of federally guaranteed rights.⁹ Guided by this tradition, the Court in Franklin concluded that "[t]he general rule, therefore, is that absent clear direction to the contrary by Congress, the federal courts have the power to award any appropriate relief in a cognizable cause of action brought pursuant to a federal statute."¹⁰

In Franklin, the issue before the Court was what types of remedies were available to a claimant in a private action for sex discrimination under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. The Court attempted to put to rest the argument that a damages award unduly expands the federal courts' power in violation of separation of powers principles, as such an argument "misconceives the difference between a cause of action and a remedy."¹¹ In further explanation, the Court noted:

Unlike the finding of a cause of action, which authorizes a court to hear a case or controversy, the discretion to award appropriate relief involves no such increase in judicial power and, in fact, historically has been thought necessary to provide an important safeguard against legislative and executive abuses and to insure an independent Judiciary. Moreover, selective adjudication of the sort advocated here would harm separation of powers by giving judges the power to render inutile causes of action authorized by Congress through a decision that no remedy is available.¹²

In its attempts to put to rest the theory that a court's ability to award appropriate relief does extend into the legislative and executive branches' powers, the decision in Franklin—an instruction that, absent any intent to the contrary reflected in a statute, the presumption should be in favor of all available relief (both injunctive and monetary)—should have carried quite a punch among lower courts when analyzing RLUIPA. However, although this should have occurred in theory, such was not the case practically, as federal district courts still are in flux over what Franklin means for the future of RLUIPA's available relief.

In 2003, as redress for defendants' violation of RLUIPA, the church plaintiff in Guru Nanak Sikh Society of Yuba City v. County of Sutter sought declaratory, injunctive, and compensatory relief against the county for land use regulations that infringed upon the church's religious rights.¹³ The county was trying to prevent the church from assembling at its property to worship. As the majority of courts agree, the court in Guru Nanak found it readily apparent that declaratory and injunctive relief are "appropriate relief" under RLUIPA, and accordingly, the court declared the challenged land use decision as invalid and enjoined the county defendants from enforcing it.¹⁴ However, in deciding the church's rights to monetary relief, the district court in Guru Nanak allowed only a claim for nominal damages. The court did deny a claim for compensatory damages, but that claim was limited only to the land use permit application deposit of $1,938.93. The court did not find that such a modest cost actually added to the burden on the church's religious exercise (compensable on a "substantial burden" theory), or find that those costs were applied differentially (compensable on an "equal terms" theory) or unreasonably (compensable on an "unreasonableness" theory).¹⁵ The Third Circuit also followed Smith in its interpretation of pursuing money claims against individuals in their individual capacities, and decided that "government" in RLUIPA includes officials, so actions are permitted against them at least in their official capacities.¹⁶

Almost four years later, in Lighthouse Institute for Evangelism, Inc. v. City of Long Branch,¹⁷ the Third Circuit did not go into a lengthy discussion as to whether monetary damages were available to the church under RLUIPA, but rather assumed so. The church sued the city for its zoning ordinance placing religious organizations on less than equal terms with nonreligious assemblies. The city changed its zoning plan, so injunctive relief no longer was available or necessary because where a regulation is challenged as invalid on its face, "if an amendment removes those features . . . being challenged by the claim, any claim for injunctive relief becomes moot as to those features."¹⁸ Since the plan superseded the ordinance in all relevant respects, its enactment mooted Lighthouse's claims for injunctive relief based on the facial invalidity of the ordinance. However, the court noted that Lighthouse's claims for compensatory damages and attorney fees remained viable.¹⁹ The Third Circuit thus allowed Lighthouse's claims only insofar as they were claims for compensatory damages and attorney fees.²⁰

Because there is such a great conflict among federal district courts regarding the availability of nominal, punitive, and compensatory damages in an RLUIPA action, the only truly reliable reasoning can be found in Congress's legislative history when it enacted the controversial statute in 2000. Congress's use of the term of art "appropriate relief" in RLUIPA, enacted against the backdrop of Franklin and Burlington,²¹ can only mean that Congress intended monetary damages to be one of the remedies available to successful RLUIPA plaintiffs. Indeed, it would be especially ironic if Congress's use of a term of art that underscores the breadth of available relief prompted the courts instead to narrow the scope of that relief.

Such a narrow interpretation of "appropriate relief" would be less appropriate in light of other statutory provisions of RLUIPA. Section 4(f) grants the United States authority to enforce the provisions of the act by "an action for injunction relief."²² Congress knew how to limit available relief only to declaration and injunction, and even did so in another part of the act, preferring instead broader language to describe the relief available to private plaintiffs.²³ Moreover, section 5(g) expressly calls for the construction of the act that is most protective of religious exercise.²⁴ And construing "appropriate relief" to encompass damages serves that purpose in various ways. To pick just one example, the land use process—and the subsequent litigation process—often take so long to complete that religious institutions face a high risk of either losing their lease or being forced to resell the property at issue. This would moot injunctive relief and, if damages were unavailable, the entire case. Thus, the absence of damages would create a perverse...