Judge Asked To Void Isu’s Land Swap With Mormons Attorney Says Ruling Is Needed To Preserve Separation Of Church And State
An attorney contends Idaho State University is too closely linked to the Mormon Church, and he wants a federal judge to void a land swap between the school and church that will allow construction of a new LDS Institute of Religion.
Among those named as defendants are Richard Bowen, president of Idaho State, and Gordon B. Hinckley, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The lawsuit was filed in the name of Waller Wigginton, a Pocatello resident.
D. Bernard Zahlea, Boise, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Boise Friday afternoon. It asks for an injunction and temporary restraining order to block the church from groundbreaking and the start of construction on a planned Institute of Religion.
After months of negotiations, hearings and appraisals, the Idaho Board of Education earlier this year gave final approval to a land trade involving the old LDS Institute of Religion on the ISU campus for a tract of university-owned land and other considerations.
“We have not seen the suit yet. We do not know in any detail at all what it says,” Kent Tingey said Saturday afternoon. He’s a top assistant to Bowen.
“We have had three appraisals on every piece of land,” he said.
The Board of Education did its appraisal on the property, the church did its own valuation and the school paid for an appraisal, Tingey said, and the final agreement was worked out after that.
A spokesman for the LDS Church in Salt Lake City could not be reached for comment Saturday afternoon.
Zahlea is involved in an another church-state separation lawsuit in Pocatello. On Tuesday, July 25, a lawsuit filed by Zahlea through the American Civil Liberties Union is tentatively scheduled for trial before U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge.
It seeks an order that the Ten Commandments monument on the Bannock County Courthouse lawn must be removed because it violates the separation between church and state. Bannock County officials are opposing the lawsuit.
Zahlea’s new lawsuit asks for a declaratory judgment that ISU’s “past preferential treatment of Mormon institutions” violates state and federal constitutions.
It also asks an order “that ISU be permanently enjoined from giving further preference to Mormon institutions, or from further expending public funds for religious purposes.” It asks that the land swap contract be declared void.
It also asks to recover the cost of litigation and “reasonable” attorney fees.
The Zahlea lawsuit contends that Idaho State’s Department of Religious Studies allows students to take courses in religion which count toward graduation requirements.
Most of those courses are offered and administered through the Institute of Religion, the lawsuit said. “Courses such as ‘Courtship and Marriage’ and ‘Marriage Enhancement’ are oriented toward the practice of religion, rather than the study of marriage,” it said.