The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday announced it would drop a religious discrimination lawsuit against Stafford County involving a Muslim cemetery.
Last month, Stafford supervisors agreed to settle a lawsuit filed by the All Muslim Association of America that claimed supervisors discriminated by blocking it from creating a cemetery on 29 acres in the 1500 block of Garrisonville Road.
The AMAA purchased the land, which had been a golf driving range, in 2015 for $800,000 to build a second Muslim cemetery in the county. The AMAA cemetery on Brooke Road is near capacity.
As part of the county’s settlement, the AMAA received $500,000 and county approval to build the new cemetery on Garrisonville Road. As a result, the Department of Justice said it would drop its lawsuit against Stafford.
The county spent more than $390,000 in legal fees defending a 2016 Board of Supervisors’ decision to create more restrictive rules for new cemeteries.
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Lawsuits filed by the AMAA and Justice Department claimed the county’s decision was discriminatory and arbitrary, and alleged the county and its supervisors adopted a stricter ordinance than required by the state “to preclude a Muslim association from building a cemetery on land zoned for that purpose.”
The Board of Supervisors repealed the revisions last year, clearing the way for the Muslim cemetery to be approved.