A Jewish group is waging a fight in federal court to keep the officials of a beach community on Long Island, New York, from turning their worship and outreach property into a lifeguard center.
The village of Atlantic Beach has other options for building the lifeguard center closer to the beach but chose to take the property in violation of the Jewish group’s constitutional rights, the federal lawsuit alleges.
“The government must have a very compelling reason to seize a religious organization’s property. Taking a religious organization’s property to use it as the operations center for lifeguards is not a compelling reason,” said Jeremy Dys, senior counsel at First Liberty Institute, which is representing the Jewish group.