Zoning laws place enormous power in the hands of local authorities. Suppose I’d like to convert the garage on my house in a residential neighborhood into a convenience store. Surely I have a fundamental right to operate a business and to make a living. My convenience store would sell milk that parents would buy for their children. Surely children have a right to be provided with milk. Yet zoning laws prohibit my converting my garage to a convenience store. The local government’s right to regulate the location of stores trumps my right to make a living and the rights of neighborhood children to conveniently get milk.

Perhaps the right to make a living and the right to buy milk are very weak rights. Perhaps a stronger, more fundamental, right could overcome the local government’s right to control suitability to location. Of all the Constitutional rights, the right of free speech is surely among the most fundamental. Accordingly, what I’d like to do is put up a large sign advertising my house for sale. Sorry, the local government permits only small signs. The local government’s right to regulate the manner of free speech is greater than my fundamental right to speak.

The local government’s right to regulate activity extends to issues of proximity. In some communities, zoning laws prohibit adult book stores, the sale of tobacco, the sale of alcohol, and the siting of jails near schools. Some localities prohibit such locally-deemed dubious activities near churches. Localities sometimes prohibit convicted sex offenders from residing near schools or playgrounds.

Zoning laws are often seemingly arbitrary, based on whatever the city council believes to be a nice arrangement. Industry is prohibited here but not there. New York City has zoning laws that confine strip clubs to certain zones, and those regulations are liberally interpreted and enforced. Things that cannot be prohibited outright, are subject to whimsical restrictions on location, so long as the activities are allowed. Strip clubs and porn are, the Supremes rule, in the category of free speech, but they need not be allowed on every block.

So how about a mosque celebrating the triumph of Muslim martyrs over Western infidels? OK, I worded that a bit harshly. All we know is that Imam-in-chief of the proposed mosques believes that Sharia law should rule in America, that he wanted to name it after a previous Muslim victory over infidels, that he won’t condemn Hamas as a terrorist organization, and that he won’t open his proposed “community center” to allow Christians or Jews to worship there. He has every bit as much right to practice his right of free speech as have a right to sell milk to feed children. That is to say he has a right to do it somewhere, but subject to whatever the city deems to be a suitable location.

Localities often change their zoning laws in response to new challenges. When Walmart wants to build a big-box store, a town may suddenly decide they need an ordnance prohibiting big-box stores. In the case of strip clubs in New York City, the City changed where strip clubs were to be allowed even after many had been built.

New York City would be within its rights to prohibit, say, all new single-religion community centers within five blocks of the 9/11 site. If the objection is that such a prohibition is arbitrary, that’s not a decisive objection, because zoning laws are by nature arbitrary. That something is religious does not overcome restrictions on location, any more than free speech or the property rights overcome restrictions on location.

The 9/11 Mosque is a zoning issue. The City can declare the 9/11 site a “Multi-cultural Awareness Zone” and restrict proximate development accordingly.