By Nick Gale, WLS-AM 890 News
(CHICAGO) — The Justice Department has announced an agreement with the City of Des Plaines to resolve allegations that the city violated the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act when it denied a rezoning application to allow The Society of American Bosnians and Herzegovinians, a Bosnian Muslim religious organization, to use a vacant building as a mosque.
The agreement resolves a lawsuit the department filed in September 2015, after conducting an investigation into the city’s zoning and land use practices.
The United States’ complaint alleged that the city discriminated against SABAH on the basis of religion or religious denomination by treating land use applications by non-Muslim religious groups better than it treated SABAH’s application.
As part of the settlement agreement, the city has agreed to provide training and will pay $580,000.
Copyright 2017 WLS-AM News
