COEUR d'ALENE - A judge heard arguments in U.S. District Court Monday on the future of a lawsuit filed against the city of Coeur d'Alene by the Hitching Post.

Lawyers with the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian rights legal advocacy organization, filed the suit in October on behalf of Hitching Post owners Don and Evelyn Knapp. The civil rights lawsuit claims the Knapps are being forced to violate their religious beliefs and perform same-sex marriages because of the city's anti-discrimination ordinance.

Attorneys representing the city of Coeur d'Alene have filed two requests to have the lawsuit dismissed, most recently on March 30 in response to an amended civil complaint filed by the ADF. The motion claims the Knapps have failed to establish that "they have suffered actual injury" or "show a genuine threat of imminent prosecution," which is required to have the necessary legal standing to move forward with a civil suit.

Kirtlan Naylor, a Boise-based attorney representing Coeur d'Alene, told U.S. Magistrate Judge Ronald Bush that, on Oct. 6, the Knapps established a religious corporation, Hitching Post LLC. City officials, Naylor added, were not aware of this information until the ADF filed its original complaint on Oct. 17.

"The ordinance allows exemptions for religious corporations, associations, educational institutions, or societies," Naylor said. "The Hitching Post has established that they are a religious corporation and they fall within that exemption."

Bush then asked Naylor why City Attorney Mike Gridley only wrote "nonprofit religious corporation" when referencing exemptions in a letter to the Knapps prior to the lawsuit. Without the inclusion of for-profit religious corporations, the Knapps could be led to believe that only nonprofits are excepted from the ordinance.

"Inference is not sufficient for standing to be established," Naylor countered.

For a week in October, the Knapps closed the wedding chapel because, according to the complaint, they were in "a constant state of fear that they would be arrested and prosecuted if they declined to perform a same-sex ceremony." The amended complaint adds that beginning Oct. 23, three separate individuals called the Hitching Post about same-sex weddings, and that the chapel has had 15 such inquiries since the Knapps purchased it in 1989.

However, Naylor mentioned that same-sex marriage wasn't legal in Idaho until Oct. 15, and the Knapps reopened the Hitching Post the following day.

"If there was concern on their part that they could be prosecuted on the 15th, what transpired so that they thought they could open on the 16th?" he asked. "In any event, they have to prove an actual injury."

Matt Sharp, one of three ADF attorneys at the hearing in Coeur d'Alene, told Bush the constitutional rights of the Knapps were being threatened by the ordinance, and that the city targeted the Hitching Post in statements made to the media.

"Are you saying the city had the Hitching Post in their crosshairs and were only intent on possibly applying the ordinance to the Hitching Post and no one else?" Bush asked, with Sharp replying he wasn't. "Then why would you say they were targeted then, when that just serves to inflame things?"

Sharp then began discussion of the ordinance being vague and that, in attempted pre-trial mediation, the city has refused to further define what it interprets as a religious corporation - giving city officials "unbridled discretion."

"The problem with the ordinance is that no one knows what it means," Sharp added. "We are happy to work with the city to clarify the ordinance. The Knapps established a religious corporation to protect themselves. Whether that satisfies the city, we don't know."

Bush mentioned that Gridley had given sworn testimony that the city would not prosecute the Knapps, and that the establishment of the Hitching Post LLC left the wedding chapel exempt from the ordinance.

"What do you want that the city hasn't already said?" Bush asked.

"Simply issue an injunction that, as written, the ordinance is void from vagueness because it doesn't define a religious corporation," Sharp replied.

Bush is expected to issue a ruling on the motion to dismiss the lawsuit within the next 60 days.