The U. S. Supreme Court has declined to hear a challenge to the constitutionality of a Massachusetts law that allows zoning exemptions for religious organizations. The case was brought by Belmont residents opposed to the placement of the new 68,000 square-foot Mormon Temple in a residential neighborhood. The plaintiffs, who filed the case in state court in 1998, before the temple was constructed, maintained that the state's Dover Amendment violates the First Amendment of the Constitution by giving unfair advantages to religious institutions over secular ones. Churches should not be allowed to override local zoning rules without a special permit, the plaintiffs argued.

So far, both the state court and the U. S. First Circuit Court of Appeals have upheld the 1950 zoning law. In its decision last May, the appeals court said that the Dover Amendment represents "a secular judgment that religious institutions ... are compatible with every other type of land use and thus will not detract from the quality of life in any neighborhood." The U. S. Supreme Court made no comment on the case.

A separate case, pertaining to the height of the temple's spire, has been appealed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A Middlesex Superior Court judge ruled last February that the spire could not exceed the town's normal height limit of 67 feet. This struck down a 1997 decision by Belmont's Zoning Board of Appeals that would have permitted a lighted 139-foot spire. Oral arguments were heard by the Appeals Court in January.

--Sharon Vanderslice