Falwell, Virginia resolve lawsuit over church land limits
By The Associated Press
10.03.02
LYNCHBURG, Va. — The Rev. Jerry Falwell's church and state Attorney General Jerry Kilgore ended a federal lawsuit this week that had challenged an 18th-century law limiting how much land a church can own.
Lawyers on both sides agreed that the law does not apply to Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church, which plans to expand. The church was incorporated in April after U.S. District Judge Norman K. Moon struck down another state law that had barred churches from becoming corporations, which are not subject to the land limits.
Moon agreed with the lawyers' decision Oct. 1 and said he will issue a ruling stating that the property ban does not apply to Falwell's church. The decision made a trial on the constitutional challenge raised by Falwell unnecessary.
"This gives the church the ability it needs to expand," said church attorney Jerry Falwell Jr. "It allows the church to proceed with construction and taking the title to the property without having to comply with land restrictions."
The law, designed to prevent churches from becoming too powerful, bars a church from owning more than 15 acres in a city or town and 250 in a county. Falwell wanted the law overturned so he could build a 12,000-seat sanctuary on 146 acres near Liberty University in Lynchburg.
"The attorney general has said from the beginning that these land limits don't apply to incorporated churches," said state Solicitor William Hurd.
Church attorneys said land has been cleared for the new sanctuary and they will take Moon's ruling to the title and mortgage companies.
The end of the lawsuit leaves the state law on land restrictions for churches unchallenged. The law and the previous ban on church incorporation were rooted in Thomas Jefferson's 1779 Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, which called for a strict separation of church and state. Virginia and West Virginia are the only states with the land restrictions for churches.