Jury awards $1.1 million to San Diego girls' school

SAN DIEGO — A jury Friday awarded a Catholic girls’ school more than $1.1 million in a lawsuit filed against the city by an Alliance Defending Freedom allied attorney.

The jury found that the city broke federal law when some councilmembers successfully schemed to deny approval of the school’s modernization plan even though the city planning commission approved the plan and the school met all requirements for approval.

“Faith-based schools should have the freedom to serve their communities without illegal interference from politicians who won’t place students first,” said Dan Dalton, who represents Academy of Our Lady of Peace. Dalton, with the Michigan firm Dalton & Tomich PLC, is one of nearly 2,200 allied attorneys with Alliance Defending Freedom.

“It’s irresponsible for city officials to abuse city zoning restrictions to shut down a religious school’s ability to serve its students,” Dalton said. “There’s no justification for treating schools dedicated to serving the community in this way, but it’s also illegal and unconstitutional. The jury made the right call in putting a stop to the injustice that occurred here and in sending a clear message to any city that allows such a violation of constitutionally protected freedoms to occur.”

The school, which is San Diego’s first high school, submitted a plan to the city in May 2007 to build a new classroom building and parking structure on land it already owned. Local opponents of the plan claimed that three homes on the school’s own land that would be removed to make way for the new buildings were historic and could not be destroyed. The San Diego Developmental Service Department disagreed, citing 24,000 similarly styled homes that existed in the North Park community. The department unanimously approved a conditional use permit for the school in October 2008.

The opposition group appealed the decision to the city council. City staff testified that, just days prior to the appeal hearing in 2009, District 3 Councilman Todd Gloria met with them to discuss ways to block the school’s modernization plan. He eventually succeeded in convincing a majority of the council to block the plan and to later deny a motion to reconsider that decision as part of a settlement agreement with the school, thus breaching the agreement.

The school filed its suit, Academy of Our Lady of Peace v. City of San Diego, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California in May 2009 on the grounds that the city violated the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, a federal law that protects faith-based organizations in land use disputes. The lawsuit also cited both federal and state constitutional violations.

A jury found in favor of the school and awarded it $1,111,652. The court could issue a final order in the case as early as next week.