§ 110.010.Application to Certain Cases

A land use reservation, and the date it names is doing precise work.

Notwithstanding any other provision of this chapter, a municipality has no less authority to adopt or apply laws and regulations concerning zoning, land use planning, traffic management, urban nuisance, or historic preservation than the authority that existed under the law as interpreted by the federal courts before April 17, 1990.

April 17, 1990 is the date of the United States Supreme Court decision that changed the free exercise standard and prompted the wave of restoration acts of which this chapter is one.

The reference fixes a baseline. Municipal authority in these five fields is preserved at the pre-decision level — the level that existed under the stricter standard this chapter restores.

The provision is a floor for cities, not a ceiling — "no less authority" — so it prevents the chapter reducing municipal power below that point.

The five fields are where religious land use disputes concentrate. A congregation seeking to build, expand, or use a property in a residential zone, or to alter a historic building, is the recurring case.

Cities pressed for this reservation because the alternative was unmanageable. A zoning ordinance applied to a religious institution would otherwise face strict scrutiny, and a city would have to justify each application as the least restrictive means.

The second sentence separates the chapter from ordinary land use law: the chapter does not affect the authority of a municipality to adopt or apply laws as that authority has been interpreted by any court in cases that do not involve the free exercise of religion.

So a city’s general zoning power is untouched, and this chapter bears only on cases where free exercise is in issue.