US Justice Department backs megachurch suing Chatham County over alleged bias
The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a statement in federal court supporting a Triangle megachurch’s fight to build a new campus in Chatham County.
The statement rejects Chatham County’s claim that a federal judge lacks the jurisdiction to overturn the Board of County Commissioners’ unanimous decision in December to deny The Summit Church’s rezoning request.
The church wants to build an 82,000-square-foot church with 1,200 seats, an accessory building and outdoor recreation spaces on 46 acres at 9780 U.S. 15-501 North, about five miles south of Chapel Hill. The county commissioners said the project was inconsistent with future land-use plans and the surrounding rural landscape.
In February, The Summit Church filed a lawsuit claiming the county’s decision violated the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), a federal law that protects religious institutions from land-use decisions that treat them differently than secular applicants or that put a substantial burden on their religious freedoms.
The church asked U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Joe L. Webster for an injunction requiring the county to rezone the site and allow the project.
The county responded in March, asking the judge to dismiss the case. Neither the church nor the court has jurisdiction to overturn a legislative zoning decision, the county argues, because the state legislature gives that zoning authority to local governments.
The case has attracted national attention from religious news outlets and federal officials.
On Friday, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and other officials backed up the church in a statement filed with the Middle District of North Carolina. They urged the judge to consider whether Chatham County violated federal law and discriminated against the church.
“When confronted with violations of RLUIPA, courts have routinely enjoined local government zoning decisions that prohibit using land for religious purposes, including ordering that a defendant approve a zoning application or amend or revise local zoning laws — the same sort of injunctive relief requested by Summit Church,” the Justice Department filing says.
Chatham denies Chapel Hill church plan
The Summit Church, an evangelical Baptist church based in Durham, has grown since 2001, when it hired former Southern Baptist Convention President J.D. Greear to be its pastor. It now has thousands of members and 13 church campuses across the Triangle area.
One congregation has worshiped at East Chapel Hill High School for over a decade and is now seeking a permanent home in Chatham County, where roughly 15% of its 800 members live, the lawsuit says. The 97-acre site near Briar Chapel became available in late 2023 when Herndon Farms, a 55-plus community, failed to get started after being rezoned for higher-density, compact land uses.
Qunity, an engineering firm that represents Summit Church, asked the commissioners to restore the original, low-density residential zoning to the entire site and approve a new, conditional zoning application for the church on 46 acres.
The commissioners reviewed the plan in August before sending it to the Planning Board. The lawsuit claims some public speakers and board members took issue with the church, calling it divisive and counter to the county’s progressive and LGBTQ-friendly culture.
Many others expressed concerns about traffic and noise, the loss of property tax revenues because of the church’s nonprofit status, and potential changes to the rural area, the lawsuit says. The Planning Board recommended denying the project.
In December, the commissioners rejected the plan, saying it was incompatible with future land uses, the rural landscape, and compact residential zoning. The county’s land-use plan says otherwise, noting “churches may be part of the fabric” of compact residential areas.
Plan Chatham also calls for dense development at key locations in the U.S. 15-501 corridor between Chapel Hill and Fearrington Village. The church site is just outside the Briar Chapel commercial node, in an area slated for compact residential growth.
Did county land-use decision discriminate?
Chatham County claims the church’s account of public and official comments is “a dramatic mischaracterization” of what was said, and argued that the county handled the Summit Church project the same way it handles every project.
The county did not create a substantial burden for Summit Church by rejecting the plan, because the church had not yet bought the land, the county’s response says. The church instead created a self-imposed burden by expanding into Chatham County, it says, adding the county’s decision did not “irreparably harm” the church or prohibit churches from building in Chatham County.
The Yale Journal on Regulation counters part of that claim, noting the RLUIPA also applies to land that a church may have an option to buy. The lawsuit denies any self-imposed burden, because county staff indicated in early talks the project seemed appropriate, it says.
The lawsuit argues the county’s decision is inherently discriminatory for multiple reasons, including that the commissioners have rarely rejected rezoning applications since 2017, despite considering about 50 plans. The December decision harmed the church by blocking its mission to ensure everyone in the Triangle lives within 15 minutes of “a thriving evangelical church campus,” the lawsuit says.
The county also claims the church could be a public safety hazard for emergency responders because it’s expected to generate over 2,700 trips on Sundays and about 669 trips on weekdays.
Church attorneys point to those traffic counts as evidence of different standards for the church than for Herndon Farms. The mixed-use project was more dense, with 161 homes, duplexes and townhomes, a congregate care center and a small commercial building, and could have generated over 1,600 trips on weekdays and about 640 trips on Sundays, the lawsuit says.
Development around the site is also more dense, spawning significant traffic, it says, arguing the commissioners did not mention traffic concerns in their meetings or their written decision.
However, then-Commissioners Vice Chair Karen Howard and Chair Mike Dasher indicated in August that they would resist the project over the potential loss of property tax revenues and the influx of “outsiders” to the church, the lawsuit says. Howard called the project “a poor fit for what we are envisioning,” it says, and “antithetical to real rural character preservation.”
The lawsuit notes Herndon Farms had slightly more land that was exempt from property taxes, and that the commissioners did not consider the economic impact of church members spending money at Chatham restaurants and stores.
“As shown by the large developments approved along the same corridor and even on the same parcels that Summit wished to develop, the problem with Summit’s proposal was not its size,” the attorneys say. “Instead, the County’s problem is that Summit is a large church.”
Howard, now the commission’s chair, said in a March 4 interview with Chapelboro that the decision tried to preserve the county’s rural character, and balance community wants and needs. Other places in the county don’t require a church to get a rezoning, she said.
“We want to preserve an aspect of rurality and character in all parts of Chatham,” Howard said, “and having a megachurch does not fit with that.”
This story was originally published April 23, 2025 at 8:29 AM with the headline "US Justice Department backs megachurch suing Chatham County over alleged bias."
