There shall be no law “prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” says our First Amendment about religious freedom. State constitutions, including Ohio’s, also have strong protections for the exercise of faith. Yet you wouldn’t know it, critics may say, judging from the behavior of University Heights, Ohio.
According to that municipality’s city fathers, poker night at your home would be acceptable—but a Jewish prayer group at the same location? That is not permitted.
This pattern is not new. In our country, founded in part on religious freedom, localities have long tried to suppress that freedom. The most notorious example was the forcible closure of churches during the pandemic while liquor stores remained open.
Lathan Watts, vice president of public affairs for Alliance Defending Freedom, reported Thursday:
“The biblical account of Daniel in the lions’ den is so well known that even those with differing religious beliefs or none are likely familiar with it. Daniel, a devout Jew exiled in Babylon, was praying in his home, which violated King Darius’s decree. As punishment, he was cast into a den of lions, but God saved him by miraculously closing the lions’ mouths.”
Thousands of years later, another Daniel finds himself at odds with his government over prayer. The stakes are not life-threatening for this Daniel, but for religious freedom in America, they are dire.
Daniel Grand is a devout Orthodox Jew who has lived in University Heights, Ohio, a small suburb east of Cleveland, since 2019. He bought his home to raise his family and live out his faith. For Daniel, those things are inseparable.
Orthodox Jewish practice calls for prayer in a group of at least ten men three times every weekday and four times on the Sabbath and Jewish holidays. On those holy days, driving is prohibited, which means Daniel must either live within walking distance of a synagogue or gather with at least ten Jewish men close to home. A minyan—a traditional Jewish prayer quorum—is not a convenience for Daniel; it is a religious duty.
He reached out to about a dozen friends via email near his neighborhood, inviting them to walk to his house the following Sabbath and pray together as a minyan. No announcements. No signage. No noise. Just a quiet gathering of men who share their faith and live close enough to walk to each other’s homes.
A neighbor saw that email and informed the mayor, asking him to “put a stop to this.” Before any prayer meeting took place, the city’s law director issued a cease-and-desist order directing Daniel to stop using his home as a “place of religious assembly.” The order did not define how many visitors would constitute such an assembly—it simply told Daniel to stop.
Daniel applied for a special-use permit—the process the city pointed him toward. But the permit process was designed for actual churches, temples, and large institutional religious uses, not for a spare room in a private home used for prayer. Worse, obtaining the permit would have forbidden Daniel and his family from “sleeping or residential use.” In other words, the only way to legally host a prayer group at his home was to stop living there.
When Daniel attended the hearing for his permit, city officials switched the format of the hearing without warning, locking the official record and preventing him from adding evidence or updating his application. Since the official record was locked, Daniel was prevented from presenting evidence and testimony in his favor. Facing a rigged process, he withdrew his application—a step he should never have had to take.
Alliance Defending Freedom also reported that officials “ordered police to monitor his home and encouraged neighbors to file complaints about visitors,” leading to accusations of harassment. Lower federal courts dismissed Grand’s lawsuit, claiming he didn’t complete the “permit process.” The Supreme Court agreed on June 30 to hear his case.
This issue reflects a broader pattern. G.K. Chesterton lamented that “religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it.”
Similar double standards have been seen elsewhere: In Santa Ana, California, Anchor Stone Christian Church faced costly conditional use permits after purchasing property in a “professional” zoning district—while secular assemblies like museums and art galleries were granted rights by default. The church’s property remained vacant for years, causing financial losses exceeding $500,000 before the city compensated them. In Troy, Idaho, Christ Church was allegedly subjected to the same double standard in 2023, prompting a Department of Justice lawsuit.
States and localities have historically persecuted Christian businessmen who refused to officiate same-sex weddings.
Why does this happen? Why do anti-theists use regulations and red tape so maliciously against religious believers? The reason is simple: They don’t yet have the power to throw those they despise to the lions.