Recently, both the New York Appellate Division and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit considered the plight of Ateres Bais Yaakov Academy of Rockland (ABY) regarding its failed attempt in 2018 to purchase Grace Baptist Church property in Clarkstown, New York, and establish a Jewish all-girls school.

The courts issued seemingly contradictory decisions that juxtaposed ABY’s lack of standing to compel an agency to issue a formal determination, which frustrated its attempts to acquire the Clarkstown property, with the ripeness of claims ABY asserted under the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), even though the agency never issued a formal determination.