The facts are simple. In January 2021, Grand emailed about a dozen friends and invited them to his home to pray together. No one had yet gathered. According to Grand's lawyers, a city official then called him and said he could not hold any religious gathering in his house without first getting a special-use permit. Grand applied for the permit and later withdrew the application. He moved to University Heights in 2017.
Grand says the pressure did not stop there. He alleges that officials told police to watch his house, urged neighbors to complain about visitors, and held back his certificate of occupancy and a tax abatement. The city disputes his account. In September 2022 he sued the city and its then-mayor, claiming his civil rights were violated.
A federal district court ruled for the city, and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling. Neither court decided whether the city had trampled the First Amendment. They held that Grand's claims were not "ripe," meaning he first had to finish the city's own permit process. The question before the justices is whether a citizen who says his religious freedom has been injured must first walk through a local land-use process before any court will hear him.
A permit to pray
Think about what that asks of a man. A city official says the front room of your house is no place for prayer without a license. You are told the way to a federal courtroom runs through the very office that gave the order. Many Americans, whatever their faith, will find that hard to square with the plain words of the First Amendment, which forbids Congress from making any law "prohibiting the free exercise" of religion.
Grand's lawyers say the city did not ask for permits when neighbors gathered for card games, book clubs, or ball games. If that is so, the question is not zoning at all. It is whether the state may treat a prayer meeting as a lesser thing than a dinner party. This is where a good deal of modern policy has drifted: religion is welcome as a private feeling, but suspect the moment two or three agree to meet around it.
The early church knew about that suspicion. Its first congregations had no sanctuary and no building permit. They met in houses. The apostle wrote of the church that was in the house of Aquila and Priscilla, and of Philemon's house. The gospel went across the Roman world from living rooms and upper rooms, and no magistrate's stamp was ever on it.
"For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." (Matthew 18:20)
Notice what the Lord set as the condition. He did not say a zoning board, a seating capacity, or a certificate. He said two or three, and His name. A promise that small and that large cannot be licensed by any city hall, and no ordinance can add to it or take from it.
What a Christian owes his neighbor
Christians ought to stand with Daniel Grand, though he does not pray as they do. A government strong enough to forbid his minyan today is strong enough to forbid a Bible study in a Texas kitchen tomorrow. The freedom to gather and pray at home is the same freedom for all, and it is worth guarding for the man next door.
Officials in University Heights are also neighbors, and they should be treated with the courtesy Scripture asks of us toward every man. The city has its day in court, and the justices will weigh both sides. Our quarrel is with the idea that a man must ask leave before he calls on God, not with any person.
Whatever the Court decides, my friend, remember where the real freedom lies. The Lord Jesus said of Himself that the Spirit would make worshipers who worship in spirit and in truth. A cell, a courtroom, or a permit office cannot close the door between a believing heart and the Father. Pray openly where the law allows, pray quietly where it does not, and teach your children that the One who hears is never zoned out of any house.
The argument is weeks away. The question will outlast the ruling: will a free people keep the right to bow their heads in their own homes without asking anyone's leave? Gather your family tonight, open the Book, and use the liberty while it is yours.