Church sues town for ‘religious discrimination’ after plans for bell tower are refused over fears of noise pollution

A Catholic church has sued a Pennsylvania town, accusing it of religious discrimination after plans for a bell tower were refused over fears of noise pollution.

Holy Trinity Ukrainian Catholic Church had asked Collier Township in 2023 to approve the construction of a 13,000-square-foot chapel, according to a complaint filed by the church earlier this month.

Officials denied the proposal because of potential “economic hardship and inconveniences” to residents. There had been concerns about the noise that the chapel’s bells would produce. The township has denied that religion played a role in their decision-making.

The township later approved a scaled-back version of the project with a few caveats. In a letter sent on June 10, 2025, officials laid out their conditions, including only ringing the bells for three and a half minutes and only for funerals and/or memorial services. Officials also said memorial services can only be held for those who have died after June 9, 2025.

In the lawsuit, the church pointed out that the chapel would be located in the flight path of the Pittsburgh International Airport, calling it a “much more disruptive” source of noise than the bells.

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Jeremy Dys, an attorney for the church, told The Independent, “The township is treating them unfairly as compared to other like institutions in the area, and then they're also acting arbitrarily when it comes to their religion.”

“For instance, the prohibition on ringing bells for more than three and a half minutes per day — well, that’s picked out of thin air,” Dys said. “ They may say that it's because of noise, and that's sort of funny given the fact that the 757s make a fair bit more noise than any bell's going to make.”

The lawsuit points out that the local carpenters' union near the land that the chapel would sit on has a 93,000-square-foot complex. The church argues that the township has “blatantly violated” the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.

Dys said that under the law, “ you have to treat religious land use on equal terms, meaning you can't say yes to the carpenter's union and no to the chapel because the chapel is religious… That's discrimination if you engage in that behavior, which we believe the township has done here.”

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The law also says “ you cannot place a substantial burden on the free exercise of religion and someone's religious use of their property, unless you have a compelling reason for doing so,” Dys explained.

He continued, “Clearly, picking out three and a half minutes of a bell ringing or saying you can't memorialize the dead before June 9th, 2025. That's a substantial burden. There's been no compelling interest that has been articulated; if any has been articulated, it has failed,” Dys said.

Brian P. Gabriel, an attorney representing the township, has denied that the town was participating in religious discrimination.

“ These were land use issues that went through a process and there was certainly no ... from the township's perspective, consideration of religion as a reason to say, well, we're gonna require this or that,” Gabriel told The Independent.