Divided DC Circuit Panel Leaves O'Hare Case up in the AirAug 4, 2006 A fractured panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit today ruled on a technicality against St. John’s United Church of Christ and others who didn’t want the graves of their loved ones desecrated by the City of Chicago and Mayor Richard M. Daley’s “ghoulish” expansion plan for O’Hare International Airport.
Attorneys for The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a non-profit law firm renowned for protecting the free expression of all religious traditions, vowed to continue the fight.
Although the FAA conceded that desecrating the St. Johannes and Rest Haven Cemeteries would “substantially burden” religious exercise, the two-judge majority let FAA off the hook, concluding that “The City – not the FAA – is the cause of any burden on religious exercise because of [the City’s] role as inventor, organizer, patron, and builder of the O’Hare expansion.” But Judge Griffith’s forceful dissent described the majority’s approach as “a straw man of its own making, stuffed and dressed and tied together with hypothetical scenarios.”
“While we are preparing to appeal today’s decision about the FAA to ‘a higher authority,’” said Jared Leland, spokesman for The Becket Fund, “we are also waiting for the other shoe to drop. And that’s the ruling expected soon from the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, which will decide the question left open today – whether the City of Chicago ‘substantially burdened’ religious exercise.”
“We will fight relentlessly to protect this sacred ground, even if it means keeping Mayor Daley’s ghoulish airport expansion plans up in the air,” said Leland.
Those plans call for swallowing up a portion of the suburb of Bensenville (including some 500 moderately-priced housing units) and two religious cemeteries, St. Johannes and Rest Haven.
St. Johannes (originally called "God's Acre") is also historic, having been established in 1849 by a group of German immigrants, and has been in continuous use ever since. Some 1,300 people are buried there, including many Civil War veterans. All were members of St. John's Church, which was once located on the same five acre property and which still owns and maintains the property as an active cemetery.
Rest Haven Cemetery has been in continuous use at least since the 1870s for the Christian burials of the members of two churches, the United Methodist Church of Itasca and the Emmanuel First Evangelical Church of Elk Grove. Resources & DocumentsRelevant Cases
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