Pittsburgh Improperly Allowed Historic Designation for Church

Pittsburgh violated federal law when it designated a Roman Catholic Church a historic structure to save it from destruction, a federal court said.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh showed that the city didn’t have a compelling reason to impose a substantial burden on its use of the church for religious exercise, and thus violated the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, Judge W. Scott Hardy said Tuesday for the US District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. Aesthetic and historic preservation aren’t interests of the highest order when religious rights are involved, Hardy said.

The judge partially ...