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A five-year battle over the proposed construction of a mosque ended Tuesday when a New Jersey town agreed to settle a pair of lawsuits brought by a local Islamic group and the federal government.

Bernards Township will pay $3.25 million to the Islamic Society of Basking Ridge after the town denied the group a permit to build the mosque, the Justice Department announced. The group can now start building the mosque, and the town will be required to train officials on religious land-use laws and amend its zoning restrictions related to houses of worship. 

“Federal law protects people of all religious communities from discrimination and unlawful obstacles when they seek to build a place of worship,” said Tom Wheeler, the acting assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s civil rights division. “Through this agreement, the Islamic Society of Basking Ridge and its members will be able to build a mosque and exercise the fundamental American right of freedom of worship.”

The Islamic Society of Basking Ridge and its members will be able to build a mosque and exercise the fundamental American right of freedom of worship.
Tom Wheeler, acting assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s civil rights division

The Islamic Society of Basking Ridge first proposed the construction of the mosque in April 2012. After 39 public hearings over the course of nearly four years — during which the group was targeted by anti-Muslim vandalism, fliers and social media posts — the town voted unanimously in December 2015 to deny the permit, citing concerns over parking spaces and traffic safety. 

The Islamic group then sued the town and its planning board in March 2016. The group’s lawsuit alleged that the town’s planning board had manufactured excuses to deny the permit, and fostered “pronounced hostility” against the mosque proposal within the community. 

The Justice Department announced in November 2016 that it would also sue the town, alleging the planning board violated a federal religious land-use law by changing its zoning rules. The DOJ also accused the town of using different standards for the Islamic society than it did for other religious groups and of burdening the group’s right to free exercise of religion.

In December, a federal judge ruled that the township’s reasons for rejecting the permit were unconstitutional, and that the town had used vague parking requirements as a tool to prevent the mosque’s construction. 

Town officials voted to approve the settlements last week.

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A rising high school senior is being commended for laying down his life to protect his younger cousin during a mass shooting in southwest Mississippi that killed eight people, including a sheriff’s deputy, on Saturday night.

Jordan Blackwell, 18, was at his Brookhaven home with his cousins Caleb Edwards, 15, Austin Edwards, 11, and a number of other young people, when authorities say Willie Godbolt, 35, began shooting his way inside inside amid a deadly domestic dispute.

“Where’s your mama and daddy?” Caleb recalled Godbolt asking Blackwell, whose mother was friends with Godbolt’s estranged wife, according to the Clarion-Ledger.

After Blackwell answered that they were in Bogue Chitto, a neighboring town about 69 miles south of Jackson, Godbolt started shooting again, Caleb said. The gunfire killed Austin, pictured below on the left.

Blackwell, pictured above on the right, played football at school and had started receiving offer letters from universities. His father, Shon Blackwell, said the teen blocked the path of a bullet that was heading toward Caleb. That selfless act cost him his life.

“I know we always say what we will do in a situation like that. He did it,” the elder Blackwell told the Daily Leader of his son. “He’s my young hero.”

Caleb also reflected on the incredible act, telling The Associated Press on Monday: “He loved me enough to take some bullets for me.”

Godbolt’s stop at the Brookhaven home was the second of three he would make that night, authorities said.

Earlier in the evening, police say he fatally shot his mother-in-law, Barbara Mitchell, 55; her daughter, Toccarra May, 35; and Mitchell’s sister, Brenda May, 53. Godbolt’s wife was able to escape with their two children. 

Afterward, Godbolt allegedly went on to kill his wife’s sister, Shelia Burage, 46, and her husband, Ferral Burage, 45. 

He also allegedly shot and killed responding Lincoln County Sheriff’s Deputy William Durr, 36, a two-year sheriff’s department veteran and former Brookhaven police officer. Durr leaves behind an 11-year-old son and a wife who described him to the AP as “a good Christian man.”

“He was a youth minister and a pastor before going into law enforcement,” said Durr’s wife, Debbie Durr. During his off-duty hours, Durr visited schools and churches where he performed with puppets for children, the principal of Brookhaven Academy told the AP.

In a Facebook video shared by Brookhaven Academy earlier this month, Durr is seen speaking to preschoolers about spreading happiness to others, telling them: “You’re fireflies, and you can light up for the world.”

Despite the tragic events, family and friends of the victims have expressed love and forgiveness.

Tommy Clopton, Blackwell’s football coach, remembered the teen as a fierce competitor who challenged himself and others to be their best at all times.

“He understood what it meant to his brother’s keeper and take care of his family and we’re going to miss him for a long time,” Clopton told a Clarion-Ledger reporter.

Blackwell’s father echoed that description.

“He loved easy and he loved hard. It was easy for him to love you and he would do anything, even if it was something hard, to prove that he loved you, and in his dying moment, he was showing the hard side,” he told the Daily Leader.

He went on to stress the importance of practicing forgiveness and reaching out to someone when they’re in distress.

“Love from family is one thing, help from family is one thing, but sometimes we all need professional help,” he said.

Godbolt was arrested early Sunday morning and faces one count of capital murder and seven counts of first-degree murder.

During an interview with a Clarion-Ledger reporter, filmed as he sat at the edge of the road with his hands cuffed behind him, Godbolt said he only meant to talk to his wife and recover his children.

He added, “I ain’t fit to live, not after what I’ve done.”

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The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a legal rule that gave victims of police brutality in one part of the country a better chance of holding officers accountable in court over civil rights violations.

Known as the “provocation rule,” it was confined to the nine states covered by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which last year upheld a $4 million verdict against a pair of Los Angeles officers who broke into the shack of a homeless couple without a warrant and nearly killed them.

The appeals court in the case agreed with a lower court that found the two sheriff deputies “provoked” one of the victims, Angel Mendez, who was startled by the officers’ sudden entry. Mendez reached for the BB rifle he kept by his bedside to ward off intruders, but the officers pulled the triggers of their own guns first — firing fifteen rounds at Mendez and his then-girlfriend, Jennifer, who was pregnant at the time.

Both survived to tell the tale of the 2010 confrontation and later sued in federal court, which conducted a trial that concluded the two officers violated the couple’s Fourth Amendment rights by barging into their residence.

That court and the 9th Circuit agreed that the shooting itself was “reasonable” under the leading Supreme Court precedent for excessive force cases, Graham v. Connor, which largely shields the police from liability. But because of the ruling that the officers unlawfully entered the shack in the first place, that independent provocation allowed the victims to recover for the near-fatal chain of events that followed.

In a unanimous decision written by Justice Samuel Alito, the Supreme Court rejected the provocation doctrine as “incompatible with our excessive force jurisprudence,” including the Graham case, which for decades has set a high bar for holding law officers civilly liable in court.

The provocation rule’s “fundamental flaw is that it uses another constitutional violation to manufacture an excessive force claim where one would not otherwise exist,” wrote Alito. He added that the rule “permits excessive force claims that cannot succeed on their own terms.”

Alito disputed the lower courts’ conclusion that the deputies’ failure to obtain a warrant and their later intrusion into the Mendezes’ home without announcing themselves “in some sense set the table” for the confrontation that almost killed them. (Angel Mendez’s right leg was amputated below the knee as a result of the incident.)

“That is wrong,” Alito wrote in the 11-page decision, which was joined by every member of the court except Neil Gorsuch, who didn’t participate in the case because he wasn’t yet a justice when his colleagues heard it in March. “The framework for analyzing excessive force claims is set out in Graham. If there is no excessive force claim under Graham, there is no excessive force claim at all.”

Despite Alito’s tone — and the nixing of the provocation rule — the language of the ruling is modest and left the door open for the 9th Circuit to reassess the facts of the case under a theory of “proximate cause.” Under that analysis, the victims might be able to win if they can prove their injuries were the foreseeable result of the officers’ warrantless entry and the shooting that ensued.

For the Mendezes, who are now married, the ruling will mean more litigation and delays before they might obtain relief. But their lawyer, Leonard Feldman, is hopeful the case remains winnable.

“We are of course disappointed that the Supreme Court did not uphold the Ninth Circuit’s ruling,” Feldman said in an email, “but the court left open significant issues and we are optimistic that the Ninth Circuit will rule that the defendants are liable to the Mendezes again.”

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