The owners of a mosque on Long Island are taking their case to the courts after the Town of Oyster Bay allegedly hampered its ability to expand.
Muslims On Long Island, owner of the Masjid Al-Baqi mosque in Bethpage, filed a federal lawsuit against the town and its planning advisory board, Newsday reported. The group is alleging violations of both state and federal law.
The town allegedly infringed on the mosque’s right to exercise religion, the suit said. The town also allegedly broke federal laws disallowing governments from treating religious and nonreligious assembly locations differently.
Muslims On Long Island has owned 320 Central Avenue since the 1990s, as well as an adjacent property it bought because of a town requirement for houses of worship to own at least an acre, according to the suit.
Ownership has spent six years trying to knock down a pair of one-story buildings it owns so it can build a three-story property, according to the lawsuit. In 2018, it submitted a plan for a single building on the two properties to better serve its community.
After submitting the plan, the town allegedly required multiple resubmissions over “the most trivial of issues,” such as shrubs.
In 2022 — while the application process was ongoing — Oyster Bay passed a law changing parking requirements for a house of worship to total occupancy, rather than seats or square footage, according to court documents. That created a need for nearly double the amount of parking spaces for the mosque and divided religious and secular policies, according to the suit.
“Under the new ordinance, secular land use applicants — e.g., theaters — receive better treatment than religious land use applicants as they are still only required to have one parking spot for every three seats,” the lawsuit read.
Furthermore, in July, the Nassau County Planning Commission recommended that the town’s Planning Advisory Board deny the mosque application, which it ultimately did unanimously in November. It was the first application denial by the board in six years, according to the lawsuit.
The town attorney said the lawsuit’s claims were “baseless” and “unjustified.”
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