Bill Description: Senate Bill 1278 would limit local government restrictions on new multifamily and mixed-use housing developments on religious land. 

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NOTE: Senate Bill 1278 is part of a slate of bills, including Senate Bills 1277, 1278, 1279, and 1280 to enhance private property rights and limit the restrictions HOAs and local governments can impose on property owners. 

Does it violate the spirit or the letter of either the United States Constitution or the Idaho Constitution? Examples include restrictions on speech, public assembly, the press, privacy, private property, or firearms. Conversely, does it restore or uphold the protections guaranteed in the US Constitution or the Idaho Constitution?

The recognition of property rights (the most fundamental of which is self-ownership) is the basis of the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the tradition of Western justice. 

Senate Bill 1278 would create Section 67-6541, Idaho Code, to require cities and counties to allow multifamily and mixed-use development as allowable uses on religious land and to prevent them from requiring “a zoning change, variance, conditional use permit, or other special approval in order to permit such uses on religious land.”

The bill defines “Religious land” as “land owned by a religious organization or land leased by a religious organization for a term of no less than forty (40) years.”

The bill would go on to list a number of specific limits on local regulation of religious land.

It would be preferable to simply bar all local regulation of private property without exception, but this bill does take positive steps toward reducing the tyranny of local infringement on fundamental property rights.

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