The Washington Post reports on a 4th Circuit decision from last week approving an Arlington County plan to rebuild Clarendon First Baptist Church and situate affordable housing above it. The government will subsidize the mixed-use development, which was challenged by a resident arguing the arrangement violates the separation of church and state.

One of plaintiff Peter Glassman's most interesting arguments - that the proximity of subsidized housing to the church itself creates a religious overtone to the apartments - is taken on directly by the court in its opinion:

This proximity of secular tenants to church property, however, cannot justify an argument that the tenants would be subject to religious indoctrination. The only areas of the building shared by Church members and the tenants were the lobby and the elevator, and these, by their nature, are not places where religious indoctrination would occur. Glassman’s allegation that "requiring" the tenants to see the Church’s steeple somehow violates the Establishment Clause is no more forceful than an argument that his viewing the Church’s steeple from his own home, within a block of the Church, led to unconstitutional indoctrination.