MONTREAL — A chassidic group is asking the Supreme Court of Canada to rule definitively on whether it can continue to use two houses for worship and for their children’s religious education at its summer enclave in the Laurentians.

In a dispute that goes back 25 years, the village of Val Morin has maintained the houses are being used by the Belzer community as a synagogue and a school, and therefore are in violation of municipal zoning bylaws, which stipulate that the riverside neighbourhood is solely residential.

In April, the Quebec Court of Appeal upheld a 2005 Superior Court judgment that the buildings are illegal. The latter court found that the houses are institutions by virtue of the use made of them. Some locals testified they were bothered by traffic and noise coming from the synagogue and school.

The judge also said the community had repeatedly “deceived” the town about its intentions for the buildings when it applied for permits to make alterations and to rebuild after a fire in 1985.

The community’s lawyer, prominent civil rights defender Julius Grey, argues that his clients’ freedom of religion is being infringed upon and the bylaws should not be applicable in this instance.

The two houses are located in the heart of a section of Val Morin where about 50 Belzer families from Montreal spend their summers. Nobody lives in the houses, which are located on two different streets.

The Court of Appeal found that the bylaws are clear and non-discriminatory, and the community’s religious rights are not being trampled on, since zoning regulations permit places of worship and educational facilities in the neighbouring zone, where the community owns land. Val Morin has long suggested that as a solution.

The community, officially called the Congregation of the Followers of the Rabbis of Belz to Strengthen the Torah, owns 4.3 acres of land in the adjacent zone, about 700 metres from its residences. The land is used primarily as a boys’ camp.

But the community’s president, Yankel Binet, has maintained that the town’s proposed solution is an unreasonable proposition because of the cost that would be entailed and the inconvenience of having to walk the distance, at least on Shabbat. He has also said that the land in the neighbouring zone is swampy and not likely to support such construction.

Val Morin Mayor Jacques Brien said the village has already spent more than $100,000 in legal fees fighting the case, after years of warnings and trying to settle out of court.

Canadian Jewish Congress was an intervenor when the case was heard over six days in Superior Court three years ago. CJC felt constraints were being put on the community’s freedom to practice its religion, noting the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms’ enshrinement of “the duty to accommodate” multiculturalism.

Its counsel also said it is debatable whether a house where people congregate to pray is necessarily a synagogue, and therefore an institution, especially when the community has occupied it for so long.