NY Falun Gong compound discrimination lawsuit claims Deerpark caused building closure

DEERPARK — Leaders of the Falun Gong religious enclave known as Dragon Springs claim in a discrimination lawsuit against Deerpark that foot-dragging by town officials has led to the closure of a college building that had been in use for 10 years.

In a complaint filed last month in the state Supreme Court in Goshen, Dragon Springs' attorneys say the state ordered them to close the building at the end of December because the town building inspectors still haven't granted a certificate of occupancy for it.

Dragon Springs has spent more than $23 million on the building, which opened in 2012 and houses administrative and teaching offices and classrooms for Fei Tian College, plus a dining hall for both the college and a school that serves grades 5-12, according to the complaint.

Discrimination claims: Dragon Springs initiates lawsuit against Deerpark

Federal suit: Neighbors, environmental accuse Dragon Springs of stream pollution

Epoch ties: Conservative newspaper linked to Falun Gong buys Middletown offices

The suit, which is the second discrimination case the Chinese dissident group has brought against the town, casts the town's refusal to grant final approval as the culmination of 20 years of obstruction and harassment by town officials and "a few hostile residents." The case attributes that alleged hostility to the ethnicity and religion of Falun Gong practitioners and the property's tax exemption.

Dragon Springs is demanding the town issue a certificate of occupancy and pay damages for various reasons, including at least $2 million every six months for what it describes as an unlawful taking of its property.

Attorneys for Deerpark and the father and son who run its building department — Al Fusco III and Al Fusco Jr. — haven't filed a response yet to the complaint, which was submitted May 27. Town Attorney Glen Plotsky said he couldn't respond to questions from the Times Herald-Record because of the pending litigation, but issued a statement Wednesday.

"The town is only interested in protecting the people who live and work in the town, including those in Dragon Springs," Plotsky said. "For reasons known only to them, they have failed to comply with typical requests for construction documents and inspections, and instead have turned to the courts and wrongly claimed discrimination in order to avoid steps required to ensure that safe building codes have been followed."

The lawsuit claims the town granted a temporary certificate of occupancy in 2012 for what is known as the cafeteria building, withholding a permanent certificate until its elevator was approved. That approval came in 2016, but the town has rebuffed requests by Dragon Springs since then to give final certification to use the cafeteria building.

The suit alleges the Fuscos delayed certification for five years by tying it to what they said were problems with the sprinkler system in the attached "residence and reflection building." Dragon Springs denies that sprinkler system is faulty.

Its lawyers accuse town officials of alerting state officials that the cafeteria building had no certificate of occupancy, prompting warning letters first from the Department of Education in October and then the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services in November.

The November letter warned that the building would be ordered closed unless Dragon Springs provided confirmation by Dec. 31 that the certificate will be issued.

The Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services has an office that inspects college buildings for fire protection and other safety functions. Jordan Guerrein, a spokesman for the division, said Thursday that it wound up not ordering the closure of the cafeteria building because Dragon Springs claimed it had stopped using the building for college purposes. That ended state jurisdiction over the building and left the matter in the hands of local authorities, Guerrin said.

Dragon Springs' attorneys also accuse the Fuscos of doing “excessive inspections” at the 427-acre compound, and trying to do a “wide-scope inspection” on the Chinese New Year and during a holiday recess period that followed it in February. They lawyers said that was “as much of a sacrilege and intentional harassment as an attempted inspection of a church on Christmas Day or a synagogue on Yom Kippur.”

Dragon Springs had served notice of an impending discrimination lawsuit one week after the Feb. 1 New Year, accusing the town of "malicious interference" with the religious observance. It took nearly four months for the group to file the complaint that laid out its accusations.

Dragon Springs serves as worldwide headquarters of the Falun Gong, a spiritual movement that emerged in China in the 1990s and was subjected to harsh persecution by Chinese authorities as its numbers grew. The gated compound in rural western Orange County serves as a refuge and worship center for Falun Gong practitioners and a base for the Shen Yun dance troupe.

Built since 2008 in the Cuddebackville area of Deerpark, Dragon Springs has a private school for grades 5-12 called Fei Tian Academy of the Arts, and one of two campuses of Fei Tian College, which also operates in Middletown. The mountaintop compound features a temple built in the Tang Dynasty style, covered walkways and a 132-foot-high pagoda with Buddhist statues inside.

Two neighbors and an environmental group filed a federal lawsuit against Dragon Springs in January for allegedly polluting the adjacent Basher Kill stream with sewage runoff. Dragon Springs denies those accusations.

This story has been updated to include a response from the state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services.

Chris McKenna covers government and politics for the Times Herald-Record and USA Today Network. Reach him at cmckenna@th-record.com.

This article originally appeared on Times Herald-Record: Dragon Springs bias lawsuit alleges Deerpark forced building closure