Wagner Center Joins Coalition in SCOTUS Brief Defending the Right to Host a Home Prayer Group

The Wagner Center joined a coalition of 44 other amici in a U.S. Supreme Court brief defending the right to host a home prayer group. Professor Wagner thanked Advancing American Freedom for writing the brief in Grand v. University Heights. In this case, Daniel Grand, an Orthodox Jew, challenges University Heights, Ohio’s use of its zoning laws to prevent him from hosting a prayer group in his own home.

As an Orthodox Jew, Mr. Grand’s religious practice requires prayer with a group of no fewer than ten men. Since Orthodox Jews do not drive on the Sabbath or High Holidays, and since the synagogue was far from his home, Mr. Grand invited others in his community to join him for a minyan prayer session in his home. After a neighbor complained to the city’s mayor, the city sent a cease-and-desist letter that said the prayer group was tantamount to operating a house of worship, which would violate the city’s zoning regulations.

Home worship was a frequent and fundamental part of American religious life at the founding. In fact, it was often the only choice religious minorities were offered. The right to worship in one’s home is indisputably within the scope of the First Amendment’s protections.

“The freedom to gather for prayer in one’s home lies at the very heart of the First Amendment’s protection of religious liberty,” said Professor William Wagner, Distinguished Chair for Faith & Freedom at the Wagner Center and President of Salt & Light Global. “Government officials cannot use zoning laws as a pretext to suppress peaceful religious exercise. Americans of every faith must remain free to worship together in their homes without fear of government punishment.”

“The First Amendment protects a person’s right to pray with others in his own home. Throughout British history and the American colonial period that followed, home worship, in fact, was often the Hobson’s choice offered to religious minorities; a bare minimum of religious toleration,” said AAF General Counsel J. Marc Wheat. “As President Washington wished for the Hebrew congregation of Newport so the Constitution guarantees that, in the exercise of their religious convictions, every American ‘shall sit in safety under his own Vine and Figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.’ We urge the Court to hear this case and affirm this fundamental right.”