Grand v. City of University Heights, Ohio

Daniel Grand, an observant Orthodox Jew, purchased a home in University Heights, Ohio in 2019. Because Orthodox Jewish practice prohibits driving on the Sabbath and High Holidays, Grand could not easily travel to nearby synagogues. His faith also requires adult males to pray in a minyan, a quorum of at least ten adult males. In January 2021, Grand emailed roughly a dozen community members proposing to host a minyan in a single room of his home on the Sabbath and High Holidays. The gatherings would involve no structural changes, no signage, no amplification, and no traffic, since participants would walk. A neighbor complained to Mayor Michael Dylan Brennan, who immediately contacted City Law Director Luke McConville. Within hours, McConville issued a cease-and-desist order (CADO) directing Grand to stop using his home as a place of religious assembly or as a synagogue without first obtaining a special use permit (SUP). The CADO threatened building code citations and additional legal remedies for non-compliance, defined neither “shul” nor “place of religious assembly,” set no maximum number of permissible attendees, and provided no procedure to stay its effect pending review.

Grand applied for an SUP, but the City unexpectedly converted the hearing to a “quasi-judicial” format—apparently for the first time in city history—which locked the evidentiary record at the outset and blocked Grand from submitting additional materials. Facing this hostile process and unable to supplement his application, Grand withdrew it. Mayor Brennan then issued a public pronouncement warning that any activities “consistent with” those of a house of worship still required an SUP, that the City had previously sued and obtained a permanent injunction against another home-based Jewish prayer group, and that neighbors should report any suspicious activity at Grand's address for enforcement. Grand sued the City of University Heights and several officials in the district court, asserting First Amendment free exercise, free speech, and assembly violations, along with RLUIPA and due process claims.

The district court granted summary judgment to the defendants and dismissed the core constitutional and RLUIPA claims without prejudice for lack of ripeness, concluding that no final land-use decision existed. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed, holding that Grand had “misapprehended” the nature of the CADO and that his claims remained unripe absent a final determination from the planning commission, without separately analyzing whether the CADO and Mayor Brennan’s post-withdrawal pronouncement independently chilled Grand’s First Amendment rights.