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Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Law - Pennsylvania Appeals Court rules city agency violated the separation of church and state when it seized a woman's home to help a religious group build a private school

An AP story today in the Washington Post reports:

HARRISBURG, Pa., Feb. 6 -- A city agency violated the separation of church and state when it seized a woman's home to help a religious group build a private school in a blighted Philadelphia neighborhood, a state appeals court ruled Monday.

In a 4 to 3 ruling, the Commonwealth Court said the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority should not have taken the property in 2003 so the Hope Partnership for Education could build a middle school.

The court said the seizure by eminent domain ran afoul of a clause in the Constitution that keeps Congress from establishing religion or preventing its free exercise. The Hope Partnership is a venture of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus and the Sisters of Mercy, two Roman Catholic religious orders.

"The evidence shows that the Hope Partnership designated the land that it wanted and requested the authority to acquire it, and the authority proceeded to do so," Judge Doris A. Smith-Ribner wrote for the majority. "This joint effort demonstrates the entanglement between church and state."

The court ruled that the authority may not take private property, then give it to a religious group for its private development purposes.

Here is a copy of the Penn. Court of Appeals opinion.

Another report comes from The Legal Intelligencer and begins:

In a case of first impression, a deeply divided Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court panel has ruled that the Redevelopment Authority of Philadelphia cannot take private property marked as blighted and give it to a private, religious organization.

In In re 1839 North Eighth Street, the court reversed Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge Matthew D. Carrafiello's overruling of Mary Smith's preliminary objections to the authority's declaration of taking of her North Philadelphia property.

The ruling rejects the notion that blighted areas may be transferred to a private developer no matter who the future developer may be, Judge Doris A. Smith-Ribner said in her opinion, adding that the taking in the case was an entanglement of church and state. "In short, nothing in the Constitution authorizes a taking of private property for a private use," Smith-Ribner said.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on February 7, 2006 09:16 AM
Posted to General Law Related