The Volokh Conspiracy
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"Oyster Bay Caves, Agrees to Pay $3.95M and Approve Mosque's Plans After 'Fake Grandma' scandal
N.Y. Post (Brandon Cruz) reports:
Under the agreement, the town will green-light the Masjid Al-Baqi mosque's submitted plan to demolish two one-story buildings and build a larger house of worship, repeal a 2022 parking law that more than doubled space requirements for houses of worship, and pay nearly $4 million in damages and attorneys' fees….
From an earlier article (also by Brandon Cruz):
Town Planning Board Chairman Angelo Stanco admitted in a deposition that Oyster Bay "departed from its normal practice" to "invent the fake witness" — something he said had never been done before. He said the grandma is "partially an amalgam of testimony and written submissions," the records show….
Typically, the approval process to get the permit that the mosque is seeking only takes roughly six months to a year. But the mosque, which has existed in the town since the 1990s, said they have been fighting for their approval for over six years at this point.
And from the Justice Department's April 2025 statement of interest expressing support for the mosque, filed before the fake grandma revelations:
Plaintiffs … claim that Defendants … have, among other things, violated the equal terms provision of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 ("RLUIPA"), 42 U.S.C. § 2000cc et seq. As set forth in Plaintiffs' complaint and motion for a preliminary injunction, the Town has denied MOLI's application for a permit to construct a mosque capable of meeting the needs of its congregants in Bethpage, New York, relying on a recently revised parking code requiring MOLI to construct more parking spaces than is feasible.
As set forth below, in the United States' view, Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their RLUIPA equal terms claim1 because, under the recently revised parking code, MOLI is treated less favorably than comparable secular uses such as theaters, libraries, and museums, and the Town cannot and does not show that such unequal treatment is justified.
