The lawsuit was filed in 4th District Court over a year ago by a small group of Red Ledges residents. It alleges the county acted illegally when it approved plans in November 2023 for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to build a temple in the Heber Valley.
Specifically, the residents argue it was wrong for the county council to use a tool called a legislative development agreement to approve the temple plans, including a number of exceptions to code.
The temple is slated for construction on an 18-acre site along Center Street, just outside the Heber City limits and across from the Red Ledges neighborhood. The building will be 88,000 square feet, with a steeple reaching 210 feet into the sky.
Within weeks of the approval, the residents sued the county. The church jumped in months later as another defendant in the lawsuit, saying it wanted to represent its own interests.
Attorneys for all three parties filed motions for summary judgment – essentially, each asked the judge to rule in their favor without going to trial. On Monday, 4th District Court Judge Jennifer Mabey listened to arguments from all the parties’ attorneys.
In a few weeks, she’s expected to issue a ruling that will either decide the lawsuit definitively or set the course for its future.
A lot of Monday’s arguments focused on what’s known as standing – whether the residents have legal grounds to sue at all. Mabey said she’ll look closely at the issue in her deliberations.
“If the court finds that there is no standing, it ends the case, and so that’s why I believe it’s an important enough issue to take a closer look at,” she said.
If she decides the residents don’t have standing, the county and the church will prevail.
But if Mabey decides the plaintiffs do have standing, she could rule in one side’s favor – or litigation could continue.
That issue is where attorneys placed much of their focus Monday. Deputy county attorney Jon Woodard argued that since the residents live in Heber City, they don’t have the right to challenge the county’s decision.
“You’ve got to be in the jurisdiction of the decision-making body,” he said. “In this case, that only applies within the land use authority of the county, which is not Heber City – it’s only the unincorporated areas of Wasatch County.”
Woodard also said the code exceptions in the development agreement are legal because the county council followed the process laid out in state law to enact the agreement.
“You can contradict county land use regulations through a legislative development agreement, as long as it’s properly enacted under 502 [Utah code 17-27a-502], which is exactly what we’ve done,” he said.
He said the temple could have been approved through a conditional use permit, but the county decided a legislative agreement would be more appropriate to handle certain aspects of the project, such as traffic flow.
The residents’ attorney, Robert Mansfield, asked the judge to invalidate the development agreement and issue an injunction to prevent the project from moving forward.
Mansfield argued the temple project “very glaringly” violates the county general plan. He said the building will hurt the viewshed, the valley’s water supply and more.
And he said it won’t benefit the general welfare because not everyone can visit the temple.
“A church is a conditional use within the RA-1 [residential agricultural] zone,” he said. “But this is really more akin to a club. This is open only to a very few select members of the LDS religion – much less the entire community.”
Mansfield also argued there’s no legal justification for the church’s 200-foot steeple under the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, or RLUIPA.
“RLUIPA doesn’t provide the free pass that they were arguing,” he said. “In fact, uniformly applied zoning ordinances such as height restrictions do not violate RLUIPA, and that’s been made clear in federal law.”
The county and the church, however, saw the height issue differently.
Woodard said the setback from roads and other properties offsets the extra height – and even commented the church could have sought a taller building.
“In determining what an appropriate height is in this zone, it is appropriate to look at the standards of the code that allow for a non-residential use adjacent to a residential zone and determining what a conditional use would allow,” he said. “And this project clearly meets those criteria. If you applied the criteria, it would actually allow for a 360-foot-high structure, because the farther you are from the minimum required setback, the higher the structure can be.”
Attorney David Jordan, representing the church, focused on the separation of powers. He said the judicial branch must defer to the legislative branch when it comes to land use regulations.
“The court limits review to the strict question of whether the zoning ordinances could promote the general welfare, or even if it is reasonably debatable that it is in the interest of the general welfare,” he said. “I can hardly imagine a stronger admonition from our [Utah] Supreme Court to Your Honor, and all other district court judges, that this is up to legislative bodies to decide.”
Mabey said she will deliberate and then issue a written ruling to avoid any disputes about what she decides. She told the attorneys it will likely take her a couple of weeks to consider the arguments, but that she will try to rule quickly.
