Supreme Court won't hear Murfreesboro mosque case

MURFREESBORO After nearly four years in the courts, the U.S. Supreme Court put an end Monday to a county public notice case concerning the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, an ICM official reported.

"That means the lawsuit over adequate notice is now completely over and Rutherford County has prevailed," ICM board member Saleh Sbenaty said.

The Supreme Court rejected a request to hear an appeal of the case, originally filed in September 2010, that challenged whether adequate public notice was given before Rutherford County officials approved a request to build the Islamic Center on 15 acres on Veals Road.

The congregation now faces only a pending, separate lawsuit scheduled to return to local court June 19. That suit concerns obtaining approval from the Rutherford County Board of Zoning Appeals for having a cemetery at the Veals Road site.

"We're hoping the cemetery lawsuit will also be dismissed soon and our community will heal," Sbenaty said. "And we'll celebrate together the fabric of our community. We are getting more diverse."

Plaintiffs' attorney Joe Brandon Jr. of Murfreesboro also confirmed during a Monday phone interview that the case is over.

"It's in the Lord's hands now," said Brandon, who along with attorney Tom Smith of Franklin represented plaintiffs Kevin Fisher, Lisa Moore and Henry Golczynski. "We have done all we can do."

The plaintiffs persuaded local Chancellor Robert Corlew III to rule about two years ago that the government failed to provide adequate public notice before the county's Regional Planning Commission approved the ICM site plans to construct a 52,960-square-foot building off Bradyville Pike near city limits of southeast Murfreesboro.

A Tennessee Court of Appeals overruled Corlew about a year ago, and the Tennessee Supreme Court rejected hearing the case last fall.

The plaintiffs' attorneys then asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case earlier this year.

Sbenaty, an MTSU professor, said The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty in Washington, D.C., notified the ICM about the nation's top court turning down the case.

"We always believed that justice would prevail in this country, and we always believe in our justice system," Sbenaty said during a phone interview Monday. "And we have no doubt whatsoever that our case would be served justice. Hopefully this will put the end of the division the so-called opposition has created in our community, and our community will be stronger and united again."

Becket Fund attorney Luke Goodrich informed the ICM that the public notice case was over after checking on the U.S. Supreme Court latest rulings.

"This (Monday) morning the court issued an order saying that it wasn't going to hear the appeal," Goodrich said during a phone interview. "The court gets hundreds and hundreds of petitions and rejects them in batches."

The public notice case was one of about 20 rejected Monday.

"The court doesn't explain why it's refusing to hear the case," said Goodrich, who contends that the high court made the right decision. "The petition from the mosque opponents was clearly legally baseless. It didn't' even present a federal issue. The Supreme Court generally doesn't weigh in on purely state law issues."

The plaintiffs took on a congregation that started in 1982 and met in small spaces for its first 30 years. The ICM serves about 250 to 300 families and about 1,000 people overall when counting MTSU students. They had been holding their cramped worship services in 2,250 square feet on the back side of an office building on Middle Tennessee Boulevard near South Church Street before building their new center.

The congregation moved into the first 12,000 square feet of the new center August 2012 before Ramadan ended. The building includes a multipurpose room for worship, meals and other gatherings, as well as a kitchen and offices. The congregation has long-term plans to build a formal mosque for worship, classrooms for weekend religious school, a gym and an indoor pool.

Contact Scott Broden at 615-278-5158 or sbroden@dnj.com. Follow him on Twitter @ScottBroden.