The U.S. Department of Justice is acting as the muscle of local mosques and riding roughshod over the zoning laws of local cities and towns in the process. Whether it be 60 foot minarets that violate height ordinances, insufficient parking for the size of the facilities, or crowds gathered until 3:30am in quiet residential neighborhoods, the DOJ has forced local governments to ignore their zoning rules and give mosques rights that no one else gets—not individuals, not private businesses, and not other religious institutions. That was the Obama Justice Department. But it’s still going on under the Trump Administation.

Karen Lugo is a lawyer who has represented clients fighting the DOJ in this area and she joined me today on the Seth and Chris Show to explain how we got here and what the Trump Administration can do to fix it.

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As Karen wrote for American Greatness last week,

The atmosphere of DOJ intimidation cannot be overstated. Negotiated settlements between the DOJ, local zoning authorities, and mosque officials take place against a backdrop of DOJ threatening long, prohibitively costly litigation. The drive for ever more concessions, and more cash, confronts communities whose small governments cannot compete with DOJ’s $28 billion budget and legions of lawyers. Importantly, DOJ treats these settlements as if they were precedents even though, by sidestepping the courts, the settlements bypass judicial precedents that could protect legitimate.

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