Excerpt:
Officials of a rural Maryland town illegally discriminated against a Muslim group by barring them from building a mosque and holding annual conventions on land zoned for farming, the property's owner claims in a federal lawsuit.
Developer David Moxley and his father had planned to sell 224 acres in Walkersville to the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA for about $6 million. The Silver Spring-based religious group canceled the deal earlier this year after the town's three-member Board of Zoning Appeals voted unanimously to reject their request for a special exception to land-use restrictions.
Officials of the town of 5,600 based their denial largely on open space preservation concerns and fears that the thousands of people attending the group's annual, three-day Jalsa Salana national convention would overwhelm the community's roads and emergency services.