# City Chapel Evangelical Free Inc. v. City of South Bend Ex Rel. Department of Redevelopment

> Indiana Supreme Court · March 29, 2001 · 744 N.E.2d 443

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9505570

## Case

- **Full name:** CITY CHAPEL EVANGELICAL FREE INC., A/K/A City Chapel Evangelical Free Church, Defendant-Appellant, v. CITY OF SOUTH BEND, Indiana on Behalf of Its DEPARTMENT OF REDEVELOPMENT, Plaintiff-Appellee
- **Court:** Indiana Supreme Court
- **Decided:** March 29, 2001
- **Citations:** 744 N.E.2d 443; 2001 Ind. LEXIS 278; 2001 WL 306690
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurring in part by Shepard
- **Judges:** Dickson, Rucker, Shepard, Sullivan, Boehm
- **Cited by:** 20 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9505570

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- concluding that “inclusion of the phrase ‘in any case whatever’” in Article 1, Section 3 demonstrated “the framers’ and ratifiers’ intent to provide unrestrained protection for the articulated values”
- holding that Article I, Sections 2 and 3, "advance core values that restrain government interference with the practice of religious worship, both in private and in community with other persons"
- rejecting claim that the Court of Appeals of Indiana | Opinion 22A-PL-2938 | April 4, 2024 Page 50 of 76 exercise of religion as defined by the Indiana Constitution’s religious liberties provisions is limited to the “personal devotional aspect” of worship
- applying this analysis to claim that statute violated guarantee of freedom of religion in Indiana Constitution

## Opinion text

SHEPARD, Chief Justice,
concurring and dissenting.
I join in Justice Dickson's opinion insofar as it remands for an evidentiary hearing on City Chapel's claim that its rights under the Indiana Constitution trump the eminent domain power of the City of South Bend (though whether they actually do so is a question for some future day).
As for City Chapel's claim under the First Amendment, I am satisfied that it does not constitute a "hybrid claim" of the sort envisioned by the brief passage quot *455 ed by Justice Dickson from Employment Div. v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872, 881-82 , 110 S.Ct. 1595 , 108 LEd.2d 876. Largely, I think Judge Walter Stapleton was right when he observed for the Third Circuit that assembling for purposes of worship is a derivative of free exercise of religion and, as a corporate exercise, not entitled to a greater level of First Amendment protection than individual exercise might command. Salvation Army v. Dept. of Community Affairs, 919 F.2d 188, 199 (3rd Cir.1990). I thus conclude that City Chapel loses on its First Amendment claim, though for reasons different from the ones identified by Justices Sullivan and Boehm.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9505570. Public record. Not legal advice.