Supreme Court will hear dispute over a Kentucky church’s plan to build a shrine on residential land

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to consider whether a religious institution has a right to build a shrine to the Virgin Mary on residential property next to its Kentucky church.

The church’s owner — a nonprofit formed by Roman Catholic priests — claims the Kentucky Supreme Court misconstrued a federal law and erroneously ruled against its plan to build a shrine on a residential plot that it bought for the project.

The nation’s highest court will hear arguments in the coming months in its latest case involving religious rights .

The petitioners, Missionaries of Saint John the Baptist, argue that they have a right to build the shrine behind their church as part of their “religious mission.” They say a federal law can, under certain circumstances, bar governments from implementing land use regulations that impose a “substantial burden” on religious expression.

The state’s highest court concluded last December that a zoning board in Park Hills, Kentucky, a suburb of Cincinnati, lacked the authority to grant a variance allowing the church’s owner to build the shrine on…