Written by Don Byrd
The New Hampshire Supreme Court yesterday upheld an agency’s decision to reject a tax exemption for 40% of the Liberty Assembly of God because that property was not used “for religious purposes.” The Concord Monitor reports:
The city did grant a tax exemption for the church’s sanctuary, prayer room and other spaces, but decided to tax other rooms, including vacant apartments, a second-floor men’s restroom and storage rooms.
The church appealed the bill to the state tax appeals board, losing there in 2011, and then to the high court. Its lawyers argued that the entire church was eligible for a tax exemption as a house of worship and that the city wasn’t empowered to decide, room by room, which parts of a church were and were not religious.
“Our argument . . . is that this opens up a can of constitutional worms if you allow the city to go into a house of public worship,” Biron said Feb. 9 during arguments before the Supreme Court.
But city officials maintained they were well within their rights to decide the extent to which a property qualifies for an exemption from property taxes on religious grounds.
And the Supreme Court sided with the city in yesterday’s 4-0 decision, written by Associate Justice Carol Ann Conboy.
You can read the decision here.
