United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 23-1754 WORD SEED CHURCH, now known as Grace Fellowship Covenant Church, Plaintiff-Appellant,

v. VILLAGE OF HAZEL CREST, Defendant-Appellee. ____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 1:20-cv-07725 — Harry D. Leinenweber, Judge. ____________________

ARGUED JANUARY 9, 2024 — DECIDED AUGUST 6, 2024 ____________________

Before ROVNER, HAMILTON, and JACKSON-AKIWUMI, Circuit Judges. HAMILTON, Circuit Judge. Plaintiff-appellant Word Seed Church believes that the Village of Hazel Crest zoning ordi- nance discriminates against churches and other religious as- semblies. The district court disagreed, granted summary judgment to the village, and later denied the church’s motion for relief from judgment. The church has appealed. 2 No. 23-1754

Before we reach the merits of the church’s arguments, though, we must address some preliminary jurisdictional is- sues posed by the case’s unusual procedural posture. The church did not appeal the district court’s grant of summary judgment. Instead, the church filed a motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b) for relief from that final judg- ment and then appealed only the district court’s denial of its Rule 60(b) motion. When an appeal arrives to us in this pos- ture, we may not second-guess the district court’s exercise of its subject matter jurisdiction unless the court made an egre- gious mistake on that score or intervening events have ren- dered the case moot. Neither happened in this case. We there- fore have appellate jurisdiction and subject matter jurisdiction over this appeal, and we affirm on the merits the district court’s denial of the church’s Rule 60(b) motion because the district court did not abuse its discretion in making that deci- sion. I. Factual Background The Word Seed Church, now known as Grace Fellowship Covenant Church, is a congregation in the south suburbs of Chicago. Like many new congregations, the church did not have a permanent home but began looking for one in 2018 or 2019. The church identified the Village of Hazel Crest as one possible location, but the church had trouble finding a suita- ble property there. The church claims that this difficulty was caused by the village’s zoning ordinance, which it contends discriminates against religious assemblies. The village’s zoning ordinance establishes nine zoning districts: four for residential use (R-0, R-1, R-2, and R-3), two for business (B-1 and B-2), one for limited manufacturing (M- 1), one for Special Planned Development (SPD), and one for No. 23-1754 3 office, research and compatible use (M-OR). The ordinance imposes certain restrictions on properties in each district, such as limits on building heights and lot sizes. It also sets out permitted and special uses for each zoning district. A permit- ted use is one that “may be lawfully established in a particular district or districts, provided it conforms with all require- ments, regulations and performance standards (if any) of such district.” Churches are not an enumerated permitted use in any of the nine zoning districts. Only three zoning districts, all of them residential, permit churches as a special use: R-1, R-2, and R-3. But a group or person may not open a church in these districts without a spe- cial use permit. The zoning ordinance establishes a multi-step process for acquiring one. First, a land user must submit a special use application to the village’s Zoning Administrator. Then a nine-person Zoning Commission reviews the applica-