Hillside Islamic Center mosque sues North Hempstead over expansion denial

A New Hyde Park mosque filed a federal lawsuit against North Hempstead, arguing the town violated federal religious land use laws when it denied its bid to expand the house of worship.

The Hillside Islamic Center for years has navigated a lengthy town review process to widen its footprint on its Hillside Avenue site. The mosque seeks to more than double the size of its 5,428-square-foot, two-story building by adding 6,600 square feet.

The town’s “paper-thin” denial of the plan directly opposed the town’s planning board and other experts who did not identify zoning, traffic or safety issues with the proposal, according to the 59-page lawsuit filed Tuesday by Linklaters LLP, a firm that also represented a Bethpage mosque in a similar case filed against the Town of Oyster Bay.  It also treated the Hillside Islamic Center worse than a nearby Sikh temple that received a site plan approval while the mosque’s application was being considered, according to the lawsuit. 

“The Town simply does not want to see an expanded mosque built in New Hyde Park,” the lawsuit said.

The Town of North Hempstead did not  immediately  respond to a request for comment.

'Used zoning as a pretext'

The case centers on the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, a federal statute that protects houses of worship from discriminatory land use and zoning practices. It joins a concurrent lawsuit the mosque filed in state Supreme Court that is pending appeal.

Muhammad Faridi, a Linklaters LLP attorney representing the mosque, said in a statement the town "used zoning as a pretext to block a modest, code-compliant mosque expansion, subjecting Hillside Islamic Center to shifting demands and discriminatory double standards that other houses of worship did not face."

Mosque officials first applied to expand the Hillside Avenue facility in 2021. The lawsuit indicates that none of the town’s departments identified “a zoning defect, procedural deficiency, environmental harm, or inability to address impacts” of the expansion.

The mosque submitted a request for site plan approval in November 2022. The town’s planning department found the project was “fully compliant with the Town Code and requires no relief from the zoning board,” according to the lawsuit. The planning board then recommended the approval of the site plan.

During that time, the community and members of the town board sounded concerns over the expansion’s impact on parking, traffic and community character, the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit indicates the mosque made concessions, including doubling the number of off-street parking spots in a revised parking layout. The mosque’s lawyers said those changes were followed by discriminatory language that indicated the mosque’s congregants were “strangers” and don’t care about the surrounding neighborhood because “it’s not their home.”

Despite the approvals of the planning department, the North Hempstead Town Board denied the application in its entirety on March 12 of last year.

In a resolution formalizing the rejection, the board wrote that the “law does not mandate that the board approve an application made by a religious institution.”

North Hempstead cited various reasons for the rejection of the site plan, including the mosque’s proposal to turn three homes into a parking lot, which would “inevitably force more traffic onto the residential streets.”

“The applicant failed to provide adequate plans and measures to mitigate the multiple negative impacts and serious traffic safety concerns,” the town wrote. 

In the suit, the mosque’s lawyers said the town’s reversal was “a shift driven by escalating community opposition focused not on land-use mechanics, but on the identity, visibility, and growth of the congregation itself.”

A parallel case

The mosque filed an Article 78 lawsuit in state Supreme Court in February 2024, alleging that the town had “no authority to prohibit a lawful use of property that meets the criteria of Town Code.”

“Petitioner and its congregation will experience substantial harm in the loss of the full use and enjoyment of the Premises,” Kathleen Deegan Dickson, the mosque’s former Uniondale-based attorney, wrote in the verified petition. “Respondent has improperly succumbed to generalized community opposition and engaged in political appeasement.”

Judge Erica Prager ruled in favor of the mosque in January 2025, writing that the town’s rejection had been “arbitrary and capricious.” The town then appealed that ruling in state Supreme Court.

The neighborhood would turn into a “parking lot,” Michael Sahn, North Hempstead’s Uniondale-based attorney, wrote in the October appeal.

“Municipalities are not, and should not be, powerless to prevent expansion of religious uses into residential neighborhoods,” Sahn wrote.

The pair of cases continue months after the Town of Oyster Bay agreed to a settlement with Muslims on Long Island, the owners of the Masjid Al-Baqi mosque in Bethpage that aimed to expand its house of worship. That denial was centered on parking requirements that the town changed during the review of the mosque’s application.

In the settlement, the town agreed to a scaled-back version of the mosque’s initial proposal. An arbitrator found the town owed $5 million in legal fees following the settlement, Newsday has reported.

Newsday's Joshua Needelman contributed to this story.

By Joseph Ostapiuk

joseph.ostapiuk@newsday.com@OstapiukJ