Amicus Curiae Brief — Board of Education of Monroe-Woodbury Central School District v. Grumet
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9 ) —— ae
No. 93-517, 527, 539
3 1994
IN THE OFFICE OF ic CLERK
——ů—
Supreme Court of the United States
October Term, 1993
BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE KIRYAS JOEL
VILLAGE SCHOOL DISTRICT,
Petitioner,
v.
LOUIS GRUMET and ALBERT W. HAWK,
Respondents.
[Caption Continued On Inside Cover]
On Petition For A Writ Of Certiorari
To The New York State Court Of Appeals
BRIEF AMICI CURIAE OF THE AMERICAN JEWISH
‘CONGRESS, NATIONAL JEWISH COMMUNITY RELA-
TIONS ADVISORY COUNCIL, PEOPLE FOR THE
AMERICAN WAY, GENERAL CONFERENCE OF
SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTISTS, AND THE UNION OF
AMERICAN HEBREW CONGREGATIONS
NORMAN REDLICH
Marc D. STERN
Counsel of Record
American Jewish Congress
15 East 84th Street
New York, New York 10028
(212) 360-1545
ELLIOT MINCBERG
JUDITH E. SCHAFFER
J. BRENT WALKER
Of Counsel
BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE MONROE-
WOODBURY CENTRAL SCHOOL DISTRICT,
Petitioner,
v.
LOUIS GRUMET and ALBERT W. HAWK,
Respondents.
THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE
STATE OF NEW YORK,
Petitioner,
v.
LOUIS GRUMET and ALBERT W. HAWK,
Respondents.
INTEREST OF THE AMICI
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
STATEMENT OF THE FACTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT ........ 226s
ARGUMENT
in et a a a an a - = = & & €& S&S & & F&F FS SE
I. A UNION OF RELIGIOUS AND CIVIL
POWER UNCONSTITUTIONALLY
ESTABLISHES RELIGION W
II. THE ACTUAL EXERCISE OF POLITICAL
POWER BY RELIGION WAS ONE OF THE
HISTORIC EVILS AT WHICH THE
ESTABLISHMENT CLAUSE WAS AIMED . .
A. A Brief History of Establishments
1.
2.
Continental Establishments
a. Pre- Reformation
b. Post- Reformation
English Histor.
The American Experience .....
-ii-
B. The Drafting of the Constitution
Shows An Intent to Exclude
Religious/Political Unions ....... 26
C. Subsequent History .........., 31
III. THE BACKGROUND FACTS LEAVE NO
DOUBT AS TO THE RELIGIOUS
NATURE OF THE SCHOOL DISTRICT .. 35
IV. THELEMON TEST SHOULD NOT
gf 40
A. Lemon Is Not Unwork able 45
B. The Lemon Rule Is Fully
Woven Into The Texture
a : +» & es & & 6 6's 6.0 @«« 48
C. Lemon Was Correctly Decided ..... 50
D. There Has Been Substantial
Reliance on Lemon 51
V. KIRYAS JOEL SCHOOL DISTRICT
IS NOT A PERMISSIBLE FORM
OF ACCOMMODATION ........4.. 52
VI. THE PRESENCE OF CONSTITUTIONAL
MEANS OF DELIVERING EDUCATIONAL
SERVICES DOOMS KJSD .......... 58
ee 8 Fi „„ a a ee or 62
R A1
-iii-
TABLE OF AUTHORITIES
Cases: Page(s)
Aguilar v. Felton, 473 U.S. 402 (1985) . 37, 38, 59,
60
Arizona v. Rumsey, 467 U.S. 203 (1984) ..... 43
Bames v. Cavazos , 934 F. 2d 912
(8th Cir. 1992) «ees tt te 60
Board of Education v. Allen , 392
D. ehh eee eseveeseececes 48
Board of Education v. Neider,
72 N.Y.2d 174, 531 N.Y.2d 889,
527 N.E.2d 767 (188660: 38, 58
Bowen v. Kendrick , 487 U.S. 589 (1988) ..... 45
Brown v. Board of Education,
O06 U.S. 1 // ce cece ere ses 4, 37, 62
Callahan v. Wood , 658 F. 2d 679
eb „ „ 56
Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v.
City of Hialeah , 113 S.Ct. 2217 (1993) ..... 13
County of Allegheny v. A. C. L. C.,
492 U.S. 573 (1969) %cGrꝛi1]t1itiii 11, 40, 45,
46
Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578 (1987) .... 14
Employment Division v. Smith ,
I 54, 55
-iv-
Cases: Page(s)
Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962) ..... 26, 53
Estate of Thomton v. Caldor, Inc.,
7 2 Oe 0) eee ee 55
Everson v. Bd. of Educ., 330 U.S. 1 (1947) . . 14, 26
Frost & Frost Trucking Co. v. Railway
Comm’, 271 U.S. $63 (1926) .... 2 eee 13
Gearon v. Loudoun County School
Board , 93-730-A (E.D. Va. 1993) ....... 46
Gomillion v. Lightfoot ,
be Se fe v ee ee 12, 13, 35
Grand Rapids School District v.
as Gee Welle SUP CUED bb Oe Oe eee ee 45
Hemandez v. C. I. R., 409 U.S. 680 (1989) .... 11
Jones v. Clear Creek I. S. D.,
977 F.2d 963 (5th Cir. 1992) 2777 46
Lambs Chapel v. Center Moriches
School District, 113 S.Ct. 2141 (1993)... . 39, 41
Lane v. Wilson, 307 U.S. 268 (1939) ....... 12
Larkin v. Grendel’s Den,
Gee UU... BEG CURBS) wc ce ee te eee ees 1, 2, 10,
11, 12, 13,
24, 31
Larsen v. Valente, 456 U.S. 228 (1982) ...... 37
—— —
22
Cases: Page (s)
Lee v. Weisman, 112 S.Ct. 2649 (1992) 16, 26, 34,
45, 46, 53
Lemon v. Kurtynan, 403 U.S. 602 (1971) . . passim
Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S.
ot.) „„ 11, 39, 40,
45
Meek v. Pittenger, 433 U.S. 229 (1977) ...... 59
Miliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717 (1974) ..... 37
Minneapolis Star Tribune v.
Minnesota Comm’r of Revenue,
s.. ee 37
Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (19669) 46
Monroz-Woodbury School District v.
Weider, 72 N. v. 2d 174,
N.. 8. F )) ee ee 17
Mueller v. Allen, 463 U.S. 388 (1973) ...... 15
Oregon v. Rajneeshpuram ,
598 F.Supp. 1208 (D. Oregon 1984) .... 33, 34
Patterson v. McClean Credit
Union , 491 U.S. 164 (19890: 43
Payne v. Tennessee, 113 S.Ct 2592 (1991) .... 43
PEARL v. Nyquist, 413 U.S.
0 Oy ) 14, 27, 30
49
-vi-
Cases: Page(s)
PEARL v. Regan, 444 U.S. 646 (1980) ...... 45
People v. Rose, 92 Misc. 2d 429,
368 N. v. S. 2d 387
(Sup. Ct. Rockland County, 19759) 33
Planned Parenthood v. Casey,
112 S.Ct. 2791 (199ꝝ77 „4 43, 44
Pulido v. Cavazos , 966 F.2d 1056
(6th Cie. 10% P ꝰ¶̃F mn 60
School District of Abington Township
v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203 (19633))) 49
Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398 (1963) ...... 54
Society of Separationists v.
Whitehead , 1993 W. L. 521202 (Utah 1993) ... 32
State v. Celmer, 80 N. J. 405,
404 A.2d1(1979) .. 2.2. ee ee ee eens 33, 34
Texas Monthly v. Bullock , 489 U.S. 1 (1989) . 55, 57
Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U.S. 488 (1961) ..... 29
U.S. v. Scotland Neck , 407 U.S. 484 (1972) ... 37
Waldman v. UTA, 147 Misc. 2d 529,
558, 558 N.E.2d 781
(Sup. Ct. Orange County, 1990) 55
Walker v. San Francisco U.S.D.,
761 F.Supp. 1463 (N.D. Cal. 1991) ...... 60
-vii-
Cases: Page(s)
Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38 (1985) . 14, 37, 54,
56
Walz v. Tax Comm'n, 397 U.S. 664 (1970) 5, 42, 49
Welsh v. Texas Department of Highways,
483 U.S. 468 (1987) .. m) e ev vre vse 43
Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1992) ... 53, 54
Wolman v. Walter, 433 U.S. 229 (1977) 6, 18, 15,
59, 61
Wright v. Council of City of Emporia,
407 U.S. 451 (1972) .. )))) 37
Statutes and Regulations:
COU.B.6. 0 „6 61
Utah Constitution, Article I, 1132 32
Other Authorities:
2 A. P. Stokes, Church and State in
the United States (1950)0 ᷑ !) 31, 32
4 Blackstome, 4. 1 21
The Founders Constitution 26, 28
H. Rep. 87, 2lst Cong., Ist Sesss 31
S. E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History
of the American People (197777774 24
-viii-
Other Authorities: Page(s)
P.V. Bonomi, Under the Cope of Heaven:
Region, Society and Politics In
Colo America (1986) ......... 23, 24, 25
C. Bridenbaugh, Mitre and Sceptre (1963) . 24, 25
T.E. Buckley, Church and State In
Revolutionary Virginia (1977) ....... 27, 28
S. Cobb, The Rise of Religious
Liberty in America (19700 18, 19
Cross & Livingston, The Oxford Dictionary
of the Christian Church (1989) ........ 19
T.J. Curry, The First Freedoms: Church
and State In America to the Pas
of the First Amendment (1986) .... 21, 22, 24,
25, 30, 51
J. Guy, Tudor England (1988) .......... 20
D. Laycock, Nonpreferential Aid to
Religion: A False Claim About
Intent, 27 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 875 (1986) . 30, 51
L. W. Levy, Blasphemy (1993) ........ 21, 23
L.W. Levy, The Establishment Clause:
Religion and The First Amendment (1986) ... 51
J. Locke, A Letter on Toleration (1990) 16
W. Lowrie, W. Franklin, American State
Papers: Class VII (183) 31
Other Authorities: Page(s)
G.M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and
American Culture (1980) ............ 17
M.C. McConnell, Religion at the
Crossroads, 59 U. Chi. L. Rev. 115 (1990) ... 51
J. Mintz, Hasidic People (1992) ......... 55
St. George, Doctor and Students (ed. 1974) .. 20
Story, Commentaries on the Constitution
(R.D. Rotunda, J.E. Nowak, eds. 1987) ... 29
L. Strauss, J. Cropsey, History of
Political Philosophy (1987) ........... 18
wr’
“Xe
INTEREST OF THE AMICI
The American Jewish Congress is an
organization of American Jews founded in 1918 to
protect the civil, political, economic and religious
rights of American Jews. It has taken a particular
interest in the Establishment Clause, because in its
view the separation of church and state is an
indispensable safeguard for the religious liberty of
American Jews. Moreover, for reasons more fully
Stated below, it believes that invalidating the Kiryas
Joel district does not confront the Court with a choice
between a robust conception of non-establishment and
providing Hasidic children with serious handicapping
conditions an education at public expense.
2 „„
The National Jewish Community Relations
Advisory Council (NJCRAC) is an umbrella
organization including the following national member
organizations: American Jewish Committee, American
Jewish Congress, Anti-Defamation League, B'nai
B'rith, Hadassah, Jewish War Veterans of the United
States of America, Jewish Labor Committee, National
Council of Jewish Women, Union of American Hebrew
Congregations, United Synagogue of Conservative
Judaism, Women's League for Conservative Judaism,
Women's American ORT; as well as 117 community
member agencies representing all major Jewish
communities in the United States (listed in Appendix
A).
As the national planning and coordinating body
for the field of Jewish community relations, dedicated
to preserving the principles embodied in the Bill of
Rights, NJCRAC believes that the separation of
church and state is an essential bulwark in
maintaining the individual, group, and political
equality of all Americans. (The Union of Orthodox
Jewish Congregations of America, a NJCRAC member
agency, does not join in this brief because of its
belief that the Kiryas Joel School District was
established for an entirely secular purpose,
aiken ie ee ä — 25 N 5 - ö ; : 3 —
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-xii-
constitutes a legit'mate accommodation to a religious
group, and, consequently, does not violate the
Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. )
2 ¢ „
People For the American Way ("People For") is a
nonpartisan, education-oriented citizens' organi-
zation established to promote and protect civil and
constitutional rights, including First Amendment
freedoms. Founded in 1980 by a group of religious,
civic and educational leaders dev ed to our nation's
heritage of tolerance, pluralism and liberty, People
For now has over 300,000 members nationwide.
People For has frequently represented parties and
filed amicus curiae briefs in litigation seeking to
defend First Amendment rights.
People For has joined in filing this amicus brief
in order to help vindicate the important First
Amendment principles at stake in this case,
particularly the fundamental principle of the
separation of church and state and the prohibition on
tres
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state establishments of religion. As an organization
including numerous religious leaders and individuals,
People For strongly believes that the creation of the
Kiryas Joel School District violates these principles
and significantly threatens religious freedom in our
country, and that constitutional alternatives are
available to provide the children of Kiryas Joel with
special education services.
a
The Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs is
composed of representatives from various national
cooperating Baptist conventions and conferences in
the United States. It deals exclusively with issues
pertaining to religious liberty and church-state
separation and believes that vigorous enforcement of
both the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses is
essential to religious liberty for all Americans. The
BJC's members include: Alliance of Baptists;
American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A.; Baptist
General Conference; Cooperative Baptist Fellowship;
~ ——— te
7
;
*
.
-xiv-
National Baptist Convention of America; National
Baptist Convention, U. S. A., Inc.; National
Missionary Baptist Convention; North American
Baptist Conference; Progressive National Baptist
Convention, Inc. ; Religious Liberty Council; Seventh
Day Baptist General Conference; and Southern
Baptists through various state conventions and
churches. Because of the congregational autonomy of
individual Baptist churches, the Baptist Joint
Committee does not purport to speak for all Baptists.
2 *
The General Conference of Seventh-day
Adventists is the highest administrative level of the
Seventh-day Adventist Church, which has more than
7.8 million members worldwide, including some
760,000 in the United States.
The Church believes that Freedom of Conscience
includes the right to worship or not to worship, and
to profess, practice, and promulgate religious beliefs
or to change them. In exercising these rights,
i
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1
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however, it admonishes that government should
respect the rights of all citizens, not just those of the
majority.
As the surest way of securing full religious
liberty, the Seventh-day Adventist Church advocates
the separation of church and state commanded by our
Lord, who said, "Render therefore unto Caesar the
things which are Caeser's; and unto God the things
that are God's" (Matthew 22:21). It believes: "The
union of the church with the state, be the degree
ever so slight, while it may appear to bring the world
nearer to the church, does in reality but bring the
church nearer to the world." Ellen G. White, The
Great Controversy, p. 264 (1974).
The state should never invade the distinct realm
of the church to affect, in any way, freedom of
conscience; or the right to profess, practice, and
promulgate religious beliefs. Conversely the church
must avoid the distinctive realm of the state, even in
the furtherance of an otherwise valued, public
—U— — —
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purpose. Upon these principles the Seventh-day
Adventist Church encourages each branch of
government to support a high degree of separation
between church and state; and a high level of First
Amendment rights for churches and their members as
they profess, practice, and promulgate their
religious beliefs.
2 ¢ „
The Union of American Hebrew Congregations
(UAHC) represents 1.5 million Reform Jews in 850
congregations nationwide. For over a century, the
UAHC has fought for religious liberty and tolerance,
believing these to be among the greatest gifts America
has bestowed upon the world. The UAHC has
staunchly supported reading the Establishment
Clause of the First Amendment of the United States
Constitution as constructing a wall of separation
between church and state, and believes this wall has
been crucial to the freedom we, as a religious
minority, have enjoyed in this country.
1
3
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STATEMENT OF THE CASE
The amici adopt the Respondents' statement of
the case.
STATEMENT OF THE FACTS
Amici note that the facts are largely not in
dispute, and hence do not provide their own
statement of the facts.
SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT
1. The creation of the Kiryas Joel School
District (KJSD) presents a scenario unusual for this
Court -- an actual combination of church and state.
That union of civil and religious power runs afoul of
the most fundamental principle of the Establishment
Clause. The absence of the abuses historically
derivative of established religion cannot alter KJSD's
fundamental constitutional shortcoming.
2. Larkin v. Grendel’s Den, 459 U.S. 116 (1982)
is dispositive. There the Court invalidated a church
veto over the issuance of liquor licenses because "the
statute enmeshe[d] churches in the exercise of
-2-
substantial governmental powers contrary to our
settled interpretation of the Establishment Clause."
There was no evidence in Larkin that any church used
the statue to further sectarian ends. The defect in
that case, as in this one, is the co-joining of politics
and religion, of creating political constituencies along
religious lines.
3. The Larkin holding was firmly rooted in
history. The goal of most fully established churches
was to ensure that the entire polity shared the same
faith, either by coerced conversions of religious
minorities, expulsion of religious minorities, or,
especially in colonial America, creation of new
political jurisdictions founded and organized on
religious lines. The Founders were well aware of this
feature of establishments; it is at the very core of
what they determined, through the Establishment
Clause, to forbid.
The abuses that modern Americans associate
with established religions -- compulsory taxation or
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chapel attendance, prosecution of heretics and
blasphemers, official control of church doctrine and
liturgy, expulsion of non-believers from the political
society are not independent of this principle of
identifying church with state. Rather, they are
derivative of it, flowing naturally from the funda-
mental assumption that both church and the state
have a mutual interest in furthering a common
agenda.
4. The established churches of medieval
Europe, reformation England and post-reformation
Europe all shared a political theory which emphasized
the unity of religion and state. Thus, for example,
the European principle of cuius regio, eius religio, and
the commonlaw prosecution of heresy and blasphemy
both proceed under this assumption.
5. Several American colonies, such as
Massachusetts and Connecticut were organized along
religious lines. Elsewhere, "in the minds of royal
governors, religious and political centralization
blended into a picture of social order that must be
we a
-4-
imposed on the colonies." The franchise was limited
on the basis of religion.
6. The Constitution was drafted with
preventing both the multiple establishment in
existence and the earlier forms in which church and
state overlapped. The no-religious-tests clause
broke this identification of church and state, and the
First Amendment carried that break still further.
Subsequent events confirm that the First Amendment
was designed to prevent the creation of political
jurisdictions defined by religion.
7. Despite the nominal secular nature of the
school district, the underlying facts make clear that
the sole organizing principle of this District is
religion. This deliberate religious gerrymander is as
unconstitutional as the racial gerrymander condemned
in Brown v. Board of Education, 344 U.S. 1 (1954).
8. Lemon (which as the Court of Appeals
correctly held, invalidates KJSD) should not be
reconsidered. No special circumstances are shown to
—— 2 —
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ae
justify a departure from stare decisis. Lemon is not
unworkable, and surely not more so than any other
test would be in this difficult area of the law.
Petitioners' complaint is with the Establishment
Clause, not any particular test. Moreover, Lemon
itself was solidly rooted in prior cases, including Walz
v. Tax Comm’n, 397 U.S. 644 (1970), the case
Petitioners say lays out the correct constitutional
standard. By virtue of repeated adjudication Lemon
has become an integral part of the law. Moreover,
recent historical studies demonstrate that Lemon and
its predecessors correctly understood constitutional
history.
9. Lemon is not inconsistent with the principle
of accommodation. However, KJSD is not an accommo-
dation because it neither lifts any state imposed
burden from the shoulders of Hasidic children and
because, by creating a political constituency along
religious lines, it cuts at the very core of the
Establishment Clause. However the tension between
—— — — ee 2
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the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses is
reconciled, the core value of each Clause must be
preserved.
10. Monroe-Woodbury could have, and should
now be ordered to, provide special services to
disabled Hasidic children on "neutral sites" such as
condoned in Wolman v. Walter, 433 U.S. 229 (1977).
Such sites neither create political constituencies
along religious lines nor otherwise violate the
Establishment Clause.
ARGUMENT
I
A UNION OF RELIGIOUS AND CIVIL
POWER UNCONSTITUTIONALLY
ESTABLISHES RELIGION
This case is about formally establishing religion,
a real unity of religious and political power.
Confronted with this paradigmatic establishment,
Petitioners and their amici are forced to offer a
conflicting hodgepodge of arguments for reversal.
Thus, for example, though Petitioners deny that any
religious mandate prohibits Hasidic children from
—
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mixing with their non-Hasidic peers, they never-
theless insist that the separate school district is an
accommodation of Hasidic religious practice.
Petitioners Kiryas Joel School District ("KJSD")
and Monroe-Woodbury School District, joined by many
of their amici, also call for an overturning of the
three-part test of Lemon v. Kurtynan, 403 U.S. 602
(1971). They claim that Lemon is historically
unfounded, unworkable and leaves in doubt the
constitutionality of what are termed, in ipse dixit
fashion, ‘permissible accommodations' [Petitioner
Kiryas Joel Brief at 43-45; Petitioner Monroe-
Woodbury Brief at 47-791. By whatever tortious
route they travel, Petitioners’ case rests on the claim
that the sole test of whether this case involves an
establishment is whether religious instruction takes
place in the KJSD.
1. Significantly, Petitioner New York State does not join in
this call.
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Petitioners hold a myopic view of this case. In
the first place, as we will demonstrate in Point VI,
infra, the claim that affirmance would leave these
vulnerable children without special educational
services is simply incorrect. There are constitutional
alternatives available with which to provide services
to these children consistent with their religious
practices; specifically the use of neutral sites,
Wolman v. Walter, 433 U.S. 229 (1977). New York
did not need to create-- and could not
constitutionally create -- a public school district
coincident with a religious community in order to
provide these services. New York could have
required Monroe-Woodbury to implement one of those
constitutional alternatives.
KJSD is not a run-of-the-mill Establishment
Clause violation. This unusual case presents this
Court with a legal problem it has not often
confronted -- an actuai union of church and state. It
has not confronted it, not because it is a new problem
-9-
or one that arises from an unforseen intersection of
conflicting lines of authority, but because it involves
an old principle, one so old and so plainly settled,
and so fundamental to the organization of the political
life in the United States for over two centuries, that
it is rarely questioned. The dearth of case law
invoking this principle is as significant as is the
absence of decisions barring the rack and screw to
the interpretation of the Eighth Amendment.
KJSD purports to be a secular school district.
But KJSD (which offers no regular public school
instruction) is, and was intended to be, something
quite different. It is a political subdivision co-
terminus with a religious community. It is the
political embodiment of that reli ious community. It
is literally an establishment of religion whether or not
any of the abuses commonly associated with
establishments are present 5
2. In this facial challenge, plaintiffs have not yet had an
opportunity to prove whether KJSD engages in any of the
practices that historically accompany establishments.
5
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Petitioners confuse the absence of those abuses
that historically are symptomatic of established
religion with the disease itself -- the joining of
religion and political power. KJSD argues that the
absence of symptoms proves the absence of the
disease. That claim is no more valid under the
Establishment Clause than in medicine.
Larkin v. Grendel’s Den, 459 U.S. 116 (1982), is
dispositive. In that case, Massachusetts allowed
churches to veto the granting of a liquor license
sought to be located within a specified distance of a
church. The constitutional defect was not in
protecting churches from the untoward behavior
often associated with liquor sales, but the way in
which the state accomplished that end.
Massachusetts unconstitutionally conferred political
power on churches by granting them the
unreviewable discretion to decide whether or not to
veto a particular liquor license.
Chief Justice Burger explained for the Court:
"This statute enmeshes churches in the exercise of
-11-
substantial governmental powers contrary to our
settled interpretation of the Establishment Clause."
And he continued:
Our contemporary views do no more than
reflect views approved by the Court more
than a century ago: The structure of our
government has, for the preservation of
civil liberty, rescued the temporal
institutions from religious interference.
On the other hand, it has secured religious
liberty from the invasion of the civil
authority. [citations omitted]
459 U.S. at 126.8
Justice O'Connor expressed a similar idea when
she explained in Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668, 688
(1984) (concurring opinion), that one of the purposes
of the Establishment Clause was to proscribe a state
from choosing to "foster the creation of political
constituencies along religious lines."
There was no evidence in Larkin that any church
had used its powers to further religious beliefs. The
3. In subsequent cases, Larkin has come to stand for the
proposition that government may not delegate political power
to religious entities. County of Allegheny v. A.C.L.U., 492 U.
573, 591 (1989); Hernandez v. CLR. 490 U.S. 680, 697 (1989).
New York has done just that by creating KJSD.
-12-
fatal constitutional defect in that case was the co-
joining of political power with religious prerogatives
and creating political constituencies along religious
lines, exactly the defect inherent in the creation of
KJSD, except that the power conferred, and hence
the constitutional violation, is greater here.
The only difference between Larkin and this case
is that here the legislature sanitized the statute of
references to religion. That does not change the
substance of what has been accomplished, see Point
IV, infra, nor should it obscure the magnitude of the
constitutional violation. What is true of the
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments is no less true
of the First. The Constitution "nullifies sophisticated
as well as simple-minded modes of discrimination."
Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339, 342 (1960),
citing Lane v. Wilson, 307 U.S. 268, 275 (1939).
This Court, for example, was unanimous in
invalidating a facially neutral anti-ritual slaughter
ordinance, holding that in fact it was motivated by
-13-
anti-religious animus. Church of the Lukumi Babalu
Aye v. City of Hialeah, 113 S.Ct. 2217 (1993). The
First Amendment, this Court said, "protects against
government hostility which is masked as well as
overt" /d. at 2227, for "it is inconceivable that the
guarantees embedded in the Constitution of the
United States may be manipulated out of existence,"
Gomillion v. Lightfoot, supra, quoting Frost & Frost
Trucking Co. v. Railway Comm’r, 271 U.S. 583, 594
(1926), by mere cleverness in drafting.
II
THE ACTUAL EXERCISE OF POLITICAL
POWER BY RELIGION WAS ONE OF THE
HISTORIC EVILS AT WHICH THE
ESTABLISHMENT CLAUSE WAS AIMED
The Larkin holding was anchored in history:
At the time of the Revolution, Americans
feared not only a denial of religious
freedom, but also the danger of political
oppression through a union of civil and
ecclesiastical control.
459 U.S. at 127, n.10.
-14-
That history, it is settled, has a particular
significance for interpreting the First Amendment.
PEARL v. Nyquist, 413 U.S. 756, 770-73; Everson v.
Bd. of Educ., 330 U.S. 1, 14-15 (1947); Edwards v.
Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578, 606 (1987) (Powell, J.,
concurring); Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38, 92
(1985) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting) .
The established religions with which the
Founders were familiar were premised on an alignment
between the political and religious orders. It was to
avoid a repetition of the lachrymose history of two
hundred years of wars and persecutions in England
and on the Continent that the First Amendment was
adopted.
The goal of most fully established churches was
to ensure that the entire polity shared the same faith,
either by coerced conversions of religious minorities,
expulsion of religious minorities, or, especially in
colonial America, creation of new political juris-
dictions founded and organized on religious lines.
-15-
The Founders were well aware of this feature of
establishments; it is at the very core of what they
determined, through the Establishment Clause, to
forbid.
In this century, of course, the full alignment of
religion with government is rare. Indeed, Justice
Powell went as far as to say:
lalt this point in the 20th century we are
quite far removed from the dangers that
prompted the Framers to include the
Establishment Clause in the Bill of rights.
The risk of significant religious or
denominational control over our democratic
processes -- or even of deep political
division along religious lines-- is
remote. . [citations omitted]
Wolman v. Walter, supra , 433 U.S. at 263 (Powell, J.,
concurring); Mueller v. Allen, 463 U.S. 388, 400
(1983). This case, however, presents not the risk,
but the actuality of what Justice Powell termed
"significant religious control over our democratic
processes." It is accordingly not necessary to apply
Lemon to know that legislation cloaking a designated
church with political power is unconstitutional, or
-16-
that coerced participation in religious exercises will
not pass constitutional scrutiny. Lee v. Weisman, 112
S.Ct. 2649 (1992).
A. A Brief History of Establishments
1. Theory
The fundamental idea behind established religion
is that the religious polity should and must be
identical with the political one. This idea is of
ancient lineage. Locke attributed it to the biblical
Hebrews. J. Locke, A Letter On Toleration
(Prometheus Books 1990) at 51-54.
Established religion addresses a fundamental
problem of political organization: how to bind
together in an effective common social bond
individuals who, left alone, will pursue their own
autonomous agendas and interests? A shared religion
is one candidate for use as a means of social
organization. Religion addresses a broad range of
issues, including the ultimate goods and goals of life.
Religious beliefs are deeply held and influence
behavior. The fear of offending God is a powerful
*
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-17-
inducement for compliance with socially necessary
rules.
The abuses that modern Americans properly
associate with established religions -- compulsory
taxation or chapel attendance, prosecution of heretics
and blasphemers, official control of church doctrine
and liturgy, expulsion of non-believers from the
political society, such as the expulsion of the Jews
from Spain or the Huguenots from France -- are not
independent of this principle of identifying church
with state. Rather, they are derivative of it, flowing
4. For those religions that assert a special claim on truth, the
combination of church and state is also entirely logical. Why
should not the society function on the basis of God’s revealed
truth instead of stumbling along, groping for the best way to
regulate human affairs, when God has laid it out in the Bible,
Koran, or other sacred scripture? Following the dictates of
revealed truth avoids communal sin and calling down God's
wrath on the community.
At least some religions assert that they are divinely
commanded to attend to the social order, which necessarily
includes political affairs. Yet other religions are explicitly
national in character, such that the political unit is defined by
allegiances to national gods. The United States has not
escaped this last phenomenon by any means; American litera-
ture is full of references to God’s special role for America, or
America as God’s chosen instrument. See G.M. Marsden,
Fundamentalism and American Culture, 11-21 (1980).
= * - J SS a = vs _ „
—_ “= i
-18-
naturally from the fundamental assumption that both
church and the state have a mutual interest in
furthering a common agenda.
2. Continental Establishments
a. Pre-Reformation
Those who thought about theological and
political issues over the course of hundreds of
years -- Aristotle, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas,
Calvin and Luther -- all struggled with the respective
role of church and state.? These discussions
differed greatly on how to adjust relations between
the two, with some, like St. Augustine, insisting on
a close partnership between the two. The church and
the monarchs of medieval Europe regularly clashed,
not over religious liberty, but over who would control
the joint enterprise of church and state. See
generally, S. Cobb, The Rise of Religious Liberty in
America, (reprinted, 1970) at 19-66 (hereafter
"Cobb, The Rise").
5. For a general overview, see L. Strauss and J.Cropsey,
History of Political Philosophy (3rd. ed. 1987).
a oe! eee i n 9
-19-
b. Post-Reformation
With the Protestant Reformation, a method short
of war had to be devised to determine the religious
character of the newly emerging states at a time when
there was more than one Christian faith from which to
choose. The solution that emerged at the Peace of
Augsburg of 1555 was that the faith of the state, and
of its citizens, would be governed by the faith of the
prince, "cuius regio, eius religio, Cobb, The Rise,
supra, at 48; Cross & Livingston, The Oxford
Dictionary of the Christian Church (2nd ed. rev.
1989), p. 108. This settlement again assumed the
need for an overlap between the state (embodied in
the person of the monarch) and the church, and the
social cohesiveness that comes with having a common
communal faith.
3. English History
English ecclesiastical history from the time of
Henry VIII's reformation is particularly important for
an understanding of the religion clauses of the First
Amendment. At the very outset, Henry VIII's
-20-
Reformation assumed that the government "hath not
only charge on the bodies, but also on the souls of his
subjects," St. George, Doctor and Students (T.
Plunkett & J.L. Barton, eds., Selden Society, 1974),
cited in J. Guy, Tudor England (1988) 125-27. The
passage of the Supremacy and Treason Acts of 1534
allowed for religious dissenters to be punished as
traitors. The period of the English Reformation and
its aftermath reflects the assumption that church and
state had to work together, that the state had to
insist on religious uniformity for its own protection
and that of the society. The assumption was that
only persons loyal to the religion of the state could be
loyal to the state itself. It was this that James I
meant when he insisted, "No bishop, no king“, L.
Levy, Blasphemy (1993) at 96-97.
Dissenting ministers were often accused of
sedition when their religious views were inconsistent
with the state religion. L. Levy, Blasphemy, supra,
at 205-15; 235-36; 298-99; 307. Lord Hale explained
-21-
this conjunction in upholding landmark heresy
prosecution (Taylor's Case, 3 Keble 607, 621):
And. . such kind of wicked blasphemous
words were not only an offence to God and
religion, but a crime against the laws,
State and Government, and therefore
punishable in this Court. For to say,
religion is a cheat, is to dissolve all those
obligations whereby the civil societies are
preserved, and that Christianity is parcel
of the laws of England; and therefore to
reproach the Christian religion is to speak
in subversion of the law.
The harshness of the English establishment was
ultimately softened by the Toleration Act of 1689, but
it did not dispel the assumption that political and
religious power had to overlap. "The Act of
Toleration only recognized the rights of Dissenters to
exist. They remained second-class citizens devoid of
political rights in a country dominated by Anglicans."
T.J. Curry, The First Freedoms: Church and State
6. Even when blasphemy statutes were repealed, such prosecu-
tions (often for what is more properly called heresy) were
conducted under the common law on the theory that the
expression of heretical views undermined the state 8 security.
4 Blackstone, 4.1.1; See L.W. Levy, Blasphemy ( 1993), at 357-
358.
In America to the Passage of the First Amendment
(1986) at 54 (hereafter, "Curry, First Freedoms").
4. The American Experience
Several American colonies were founded on the
assumption that the political community should be
organized along religious lines. Massachusetts and
Connecticut are the most obvious examples. John
Winthrop told the Massachusetts settlers that for
their efforts to succeed they must "walk . . . humbly
with our God . . . we need be knitt together in this
worke as one man", Curry, First Freedoms, supra, at
6. As Curry summarizes it, the Massachusetts
colonists were "certain that their colonies, in order to
prosper, must be united in. . Truth“ as Congre-
gationalism saw it. /d. at 5.’ Those, like Roger
Williams or Anne Hutchinson, who refused to conform,
were expelled because they were, in Governor
7. For Connecticut, see Curry, First Freedoms, supra, at 3,
79-83.
-23-
Winthrop's words, “manifestly dangerous to the
state." L. Levy, Blasphemy, supra, at 247.
Seventeenth century Quakers who openly
challenged the official version of truth met a far
harsher fate -- several of them were executed. A
prominent Boston minister, in response to protests,
defended these persecutions on the ground that
Massachusetts was "originally a plantation religious,
not a plantation of trade." Curry, First Freedoms,
id. at 22.
It was not until 1691 that non-Congregationalists
had any political rights in Massachusetts, P.V.
Bonomi, Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society
and Politics In Colonial America (1986) (hereafter,
"Bonomi, Under the Cope”) at 61-62, and then only
because the Crown felt obligated to protect the
political rights of those citizens of Massachusetts who
adhered to the established church of England © The
8. Somewhat earlier, recognizing the need to enfranchise some
of those who under the rigorous prevailmg Congregationalist
(continued...)
. Od
See a eae
-24-
new right to political participation did not extend to
Catholics. C. Bridenbaugh, Mitre and Sceptre (1963)
at 174.
Many of the other colonies had varying degrees
of identification of churches with political power.
[In the minds of royal governors, religious and
political centralization blended into a picture of social
order that must be imposed on the colonies." Curry,
First Freedoms at 58. The overlap of religion with
politics was substantial. Pennsylvania in 1705
excluded Catholics, Jews and non-believers from the
franchise, an exclusion that continued there and in
other states until the Revolution and sometimes
beyond. Bonomi, Under the Cope at 36 In colonial
8.(...continued)
(Calvinist) doctrines were not Church members, the leaders of
Massachusetts adopted the half-way covenant that allowed
greater numbers of citizens to be admitted to some sort of
membership in the Church and hence to the franchise. See
S. E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People,
158-60 (1972).
9. In Virginia, the Anglican Commissary sought to create
ecclesiastical courts to try offenses against public morality,
Bonomi, Under the Cope at 43, a proposal that met with great
(continued...)
-25-
South Carolina, church "parishes were becoming key
units of local government." Bonomi, Under the Cope
at 49.
Opponents of established churches were quick to
point out that one of the costs of organizing politics
along religious lines was the exclusion of potential
immigrants who would not go to those colonies in
which they were not welcome to participate in
communal affairs. Nevertheless, Virginia's
established church pushed non-conformists out of the
state into neighboring Maryland. Curry, First
Freedoms at 30, 42. Colonies like Georgia, which had
only the mildest of establishments eschewed more
rigorous forms precisely in order to encourage
immigration. Curry, First Freedoms at 38
(Maryland); Bonomi, Under the Cope at 31-33 (same
9(..continued)
resistance, as did other efforts to bring an Anglican bishop to
the United States, because it was perceived as an attempt to
recreate the hated partnership of church and state. Larkin v.
Grendel's Den, supra, 459 US. at 127, n.10; see C.
Bridenbaugh’s suggestively titled book, Mitre and Sceptre
(1963).
as to Carolina)”. See also 5 The Founders
Constitution at 58 (remarks of Patrick Henry).
B. The Drafting of the Constitution
Shows An Intent to Exclude
Religious/ Political Unions
The history of the efforts to draft a
constitutional doctrine that would prevent a
recurrence of the evils of establishment has been
recounted on many occasions in the opinions of this
Court, and need not be detailed here at length.“
That history demonstrates clear determination to
avoid the errors of the more distant past as well as
more recent forms of established religion.
The Virginia debate on the subject of religious
liberty was closely followed and widely influential --
and, as the Court has recognized, particularly
important to understanding the First Amendment
10. North Carolina’s 1669 Constitution did limit the privilege
of free holders to those who acknowledged God. 5 The
Founders Constitution at 51.
11. See, e., Everson v. Bd. of Ed., 330 US. 1 (1947); id. at
28 (Rutledge, J., dissenting); Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421
(1962); Lee v. Weisman, 112 S.Ct. 2649, 2669-76 (1992)
(Souter, J., concurring).
-27-
itself, PEARL v. Nyquist, 413 U.S., supra, at 770,
n.28 (1973); Engel v. Vitale, supra, 370 U.S. at 428.
In the end, Virginia swept away all vestiges of
establishment, including, notsbly, political
advantages for adherents of the established church.
T.E. Buckley, Church and State In Revolutionary
Virginia (1977) at 113-72.
Defenders of the status quo understood that
their opponents were not just attacking actual
political or religious oppression, but the assumption
that the unity of church and state was indispensable
for the social good. The status quo assumed that:
.. « [religion] needed public expression
not only for its own maintenance but also to
build the common basis of confidence and
trust among men. Believing in and wor-
shiping the same God would make men
cognizant of the fact that they were all
operating under the same general prin-
ciples. Consequently, the government
should be concerned to provide a
"competent provision" for those who had
devoted their lives to the promotion of
religious belief and the inculcation of moral
values.
T. E. Buckley, supra, Church and State In
Revolutionary Virginia at 142; see id. at 95.
Some of those who opposed ratification of the
Constitution decried the absence of a strong
guarantee of full equality for members of all faiths.
This was so despite the fact that the right to political
equality at the level of federal office-holding was
written into the body of the Constitution in the No
Religious Test Clause of Article VI. That Clause
itself marked a sharp break between the older system
of organizing politics on religious lines and the newer
secular politics. It was opposed and defended in full
recognition of the scope of that change. See 4 The
Founders Constitution at 633-46.
Justice Story summed up the change wrought by
Article VI in his influential treatise on constitutional
law:
This [no tests] clause is not introduced
merely for the purpose of satisfying the
scruples of many respectable persons, who
feel an invincible repugnance to any
religious test, or affirmation. It had a
higher objective; to cut off for ever every
‘a
i
— ee
pretence of any alliance between church
and state in the national government. The
framers of the constitution were fully
sensible of the dangers from this source,
marked out in the history of other ages and
countries; and not wholly unknown to our
own.
Commentaries on the Constitution (reprint ed. 1987,
R.D. Rotunda and J.E., Nowak, editors) at p. 690-
91.
The First * sendment carried this principle of
"cutting off any alliance between church and state"
still further, Tomaso v. Watkins, 367 U.S. 488, 491-92
(1961), so as to preclude any effort either to limit the
franchise on religious lines or to align religion with
political power. Alerted by a suspicious citizenry”
to the dangers to liberty of even a partial concord
between religious preachment and the exercise of
political power, the Framers were not prepared to
tolerate even partial combinations of political power
12. See, eg. 5 The Founders Constitution at 12 (protest of
New York ratifying convention); 18 (North Carolina).
-30-
and religion. The result was the Establishment
Clause.
Given this history, then, it is clear that those
who demanded, drafted and ratified the Establishment
Clause were fully aware of the danger of organizing
politics along religious lines and intended to foreclose
that possibility at the federal level. The Framers,
indeed, prohibited all practices tending toward --
"respecting" in the language of the Constitution -- an
established church. "A law may be one ‘respecting’
the forbidden objective while falling short of its total
realization." Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 612
(1971), cited in PEARL v. Nyquist , supra, 413 U.S. at
770. A fortiori, it follows that the Founders would
not have tolerated a deliberate effort to facilitate
political power solely along religious lines, which is in
itself an establishment.
13. See, TJ. Curry, The First Freedoms: Church and State In
America to the Passage of the First Amendment (1986) 210-
14; D. Laycock, Nonpreferential Aid to Religion: A False
Claim About Intent, 27 Wm. & Mary L.Rev. 875 (1986).
-31-
C. Subsequent History
Because the issue was so decisively settled with
the adoption of the First Amendment, there are not
many subsequent events which test the principle.
But what there is is fully consistent with the holding
in Larkin. In the 1830s, Congress was urged to close
the Post Office on Sundays on the ground that its
opening on those days was inconsistent with
Christianity. A House committee rejected these calls
"to unite church and state“ or to "unite politics and
religion" and announced an understanding of the
First Amendment pertinent here. "All religious
despotism commences by combination and influence" ;
and "the catastrophe of other nations furnishes an
awful warning of the consequences. H. Rep. 87,
21 Cong., Ist Sess. , reproduced in W. Lowrie and W.
Franklin, American State Papers: Class VII (1834),
229-231. See 2 A. P. Stokes, Church and State In the
United States (1950) at 12-20.
The fight over the admission of Utah as a state
is also instructive. Here Congress sought to impose
Oo a
-32-
the non-establishment principles of the First
Amendment in the face of what was for a time a full-
fledged theocracy. Apart from the issue of
polygamy, many Americans opposed the creation of a
state organized along religious lines and controlled
entirely by the Mormon church, a position that
contributed to a denial of statehood for some time. 2
A.P. Stokes, supra, Church and State In the United
States at 46-47. Ultimately, Congress relented, but
to appease Congress, Utah's constitution provided
(and still provides) that "there shall be no union of
Church and State nor shall any church dominate the
State or interfere with its functions," Utah
Constitution, Article I, 13 (emphasis added).
The "no union of church and state“ proviso was
directly tailored to guard against what Justice Powell
termed the exercise of significant religious control
over democratic processes. That opposition to Utah
14. For a history of this provision, see Society of
Separationists v. Whitehead, 1993 W.L. 521202 (Utah 1993) at
7, 14, 17.
8
*
-33-
statehood reflects an understanding of the First
Amendment inconsistent with the actions of the New
York legislature in this case.
What few cases there are considering actual
unions of church and state also point in the direction
of the unconstitutionality of KSD.“ State v.
Celmer, 80 N. J. 405, 404 A. 2d 1 (1979) and Oregon v.
Rajneeshpuram , 598 F.Supp. 1208 (D. Oregon 1984)
are particularly instructive. In both these cases, a
group of people drawn together for religious
purposes sought or had attained municipal
incorporation. In each, the incorporation was
challenged as an establishment. In neither was the
15. In People v. Rose, 92 Misc2d 429, 368 N.Y.S2d 387
(Sup.Ct. Rockland County, 1975) the court invalidated a
judicial proceeding which was held im a girls’ religious school
in the town of New Square. Like Kiryas Joel, New Square is
a town composed exclusively of Hasidim. Among the grounds
for invalidating the proceeding was the fact that the hearing
took place in a Jewish parochial school in violation of the
principle that religion may not be closely associated with the
exercise of political power. &2 Misc2d at 431, 368 N.Y S2d at
391.
-34-
use of municipal power to further theological positions
at issue.
In Celmer, the New Jersey Supreme Court held
that the incorporation was invalid under the
Establishment Clause. The governing body of the
city was the governing body of the religious
corporation, the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting, a
Methodist establishment. And even though that was
not the case in Rajneeshpuram, the District Court
nevertheless refused to dismiss a claim that Oregon
could not constitutionally recognize the incorporation
of a township intentionally organized along religious
lines.
The only distinction between this case and these
precedents is a bare formality of legal form. KJSD is
not formally a religious body. But as this Court held
in Lee v. Weisman, supra, 112 S.Ct. at 2659, the
[Ilaw reaches past formalism" to protect religious
liberty.
*.
-35-
III
THE BACKGROUND FACTS LEAVE NO
DOUBT AS TO THE RELIGIOUS
NATURE OF THE SCHOOL DISTRICT
It remains to demonstrate that the bar against
overlapping political and religious power is applicable
here. There is no room for dispute on this score.
KJSD embodies only the Village of Kiryas Joel, an all-
Hasidic community [Joint Appendix at 8-17], which
seceded from the larger town of Monroe. /d. at 10-
12. Kiryas Joel's boundaries were carefully drawn to
exclude all non-Hasidim, a sort of reverse Tuskegee,
Gomillion v. Lightfoot, supra. An earlier proposal to
create the Village was withdrawn because the
boundaries encompassed non-Hasidim. Id. at 13. It
is this Hasidic-only village -- and only this village --
that comprises KJSD.
Governor Cuomo's message approving the
legislation creating KJSD expressly noted that "the
Village of Kiryas Joel['s] . . . population are all
members of the same religious sect." Id. at 40-41.
The legislative sponsor acknowledged that the
-36-
District was created to serve "the Hasidic Jewish
community [which] holds firmly to its religious
tenets." /d. at 19-20. Similarly, Petitioner Monroe-
Woodbury School District, writing to the Governor to
announce it supported the legislation, noted that no
non-Hasidic family lived within the Village of Kiryas
Joel.“ Id. at 21-22}. From all of this, it is plain
that the rationale for the KJSD was solely religious.
No geographic, economic, class, historic factor other
than religion can explain the configuration of KJSD.
The presence of an intent to create a religious-
political enclave readily serves to distinguish this
case from the common happenstance in which some
religious group predominates in a community. This
distinction is entirely in keeping with general
principles of constitutional law, which provide that a
malignant purpose or an intent to further an illicit
16. Petitioner Monroe-Woodbury School District stated that
if any non-disabled child within KJSD wanted to attend public
school he or she would attend Monroe-Woodbury school, with
KJSD paying tuition. KJSD has no facilities for the non-
disabled student. Id.
-37-
purpose can invalidate an otherwise permissible act
because, as Justice O'Connor has explained, it
suggests an improper balancing of costs and benefits,
with illicit benefits weighed in the scales. Wallace v.
Jaffree, supra, 472 U.S. at 75 (O'Connor J.,
concurring).
A school district that happens to be all-white or
all-black as a result of no identifiable discriminatory
act is constitutional, Miliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717
(1974); a district created to segregate is the
unconstitutional evil Brown v. Bd. of Education, 344
U.S. 1 (1954) struck down. See U.S. v. Scotland
Neck , 407 U.S. 484 (1972), Wright v. Council of City of
Emporia, 407 U.S. 451 (1972). Similarly, some
neutral regulations of charities are permissible;
regulations aimed at suppressing a particular
religious charity are not, Larsen v. Valente, 456 U.S.
228 (1982); a sales tax on newspapers is
constitutional; one aimed at suppressing political
-38-
criticism is not, Minneapolis Star Tribune v. Minnesota
Commr of Revenue, 460 U.S. 575 (1983).
The immediate impetus that triggered the
establishment of KJSD was the refusal of Petitioner
Monroe-Woodbury in the wake of Aguilar v. Felton, 473
U.S. 402 (1985) * to provide special educational
services to Hasidic children at sites other than its
own public schools. The violation identified in Aguilar
was that, under public control, public officials taught
in a parochial school. KJSD is a far greater violation
of the Constitution.
In its incarceration as KJSD, the Hasidic
community receives more than government assistance.
It exercises the power to tax any property within its
jurisdiction; it has the power to regulate any child
attending its school; it has the power to spend for
any purpose related to the school or its function; it
has the power to design curriculum and programs and
17. See Monroe-Woodbury School District v. Weider, 72
N.Y 2d 174, 531 N.Y S2d 889 (1988).
U
1
—
-39-
impose them on all families within its jurisdiction ; and
it has all the other political and governmental powers
of a public school district. It is a lesser violation of
the Establishment Clause to provide for special
education for the disabled in a private religious
school; it is far worse to turn a religious community
into a governmental entity and give it both public
money and governmental power.
The configuration of KJSD was solely religious,
just as colonial Massachusetts and Connecticut were
set up with religion as the organizing principle of the
political unit. In creating KJSD, New York
impermissibly "foster[ed] the creation of political
constituencies along religion lines." Lynch v.
Donnelly, supra, 465 U.S. at 688 (O'Connor, J.,
concurring). KJSD in fact is an unconstitutional
"state or local embrace of a particular religious sect."
Lambs Chapel v. Center Moriches School District, supra ,
113 S.Ct. 2141, 2151 (1993) (Scalia and Thomas, JJ.,
concurring).
en oe — =
7 —— —
5 5 ———
-40-
IV
THE LEMON TEST SHOULD NOT
BE RECONSIDERED
The court below did not adopt the specific
theory we advocate in Points I-II of this brief.
Instead, a majority found that the legislation creating
KJSD had the impermissible effect of advancing
religion in violation of the second prong of the
tripartite test of Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602
(1971). For the reasons assigned by the
Respondents, the conclusion that the legislation
creating KJSD is inconsistent with Lemon is
unassailabte. It need not be defended here either
under the traditional Lemon analysis or the
alternative understanding suggested by Justice
O'Connor in Lynch v. Donnelly supra , 465 U.S. at 688-
90, and assimilated into the Lemon test in County of
Allegheny v. A.C.L.U., supra, 492 U.S. at 593." The
18. We do note that it is difficult to translate a test designed
to identify cases in which government improperly identifies
itself by word or symboi with religion — the primary thrust of
(continued...)
-41-
Court of Appeals was bound by Lemon. Despite
criticism, Lemon has "not been overruled", Lamb’s
Chapel v. Center Moriches School District, 113 S.Ct.
2141, 2148, n.7 (1993), and is constantly applied in
this Court and lower state and federal courts.
Petitioners (other than New York State) in this
Court argue not only that KJSD's creation did not run
afoul of any of Lemon's three prongs, but that the
doctrine ought to be dispensed with entirely, at least
to the extent that it is applied to laws "designed to
remove barriers that prevent religious minorities from
practicing their religion." [KJSD Brief at 44-45;
Monroe-Woodbury Brief at 45-49]. They suggest that
the true purpose of the religion clauses is religious
IS. (continued)
Justice O Connors test in Lynch and County of Allegheny —
to this case, where the State of New York has in fact set up a
public school district along religious lines. While amici believe
that verbal or symbolic endorsements of religion can be
unconstitutional, such violations pale in comparison to the
magnitude of the violation here. Just as a jeweler’s scale
cannot be used to weigh a truckload of gravel without being
crushed, so too a test designed to check endorsements is
overwhelmed by a full-fledged established religion.
42
liberty and that accommodation, not separation, is the
essence of religious liberty. Amici on the other hand
believe that, while accommodation is an essential
element of religious liberty, separation is no less
integral to constitutional principle of religious
liberty.
Petitioners would have the Establishment Clause
limited to the “evils” at which the Clause was
directed -- “sponsorship, financial support, and
"
active involvement in religious activity .. ..
[KJSD brief at 44, citing Walz v. Tax Comm'n, 397
U.S. 664, 668 (1970).] We have already demonstrated
in Points I and II that this case, involving a joint
enterprise between church and state and a sharing of
political authority between them, presents the very
evils Walz identifies as targets of the Establishment
Clause. Because it is unnecessary to apply the
Lemon test in this case, there is no need to
reconsider that case here, for in any event,
-43-
Petitioners have not made out the requisite showing
to overcome a settled rule of constitutional law.
Stare decisis applies to constitutional decisions as
well as to statutory ones, Planned Parenthood v. Casey,
112 S.Ct. 2791 2808-09 (1992), for "the doctrine of
stare decisis is of fundamental importance to the rule of
law." Patterson v. McClean Credit Union, 491 U.S. 164,
172 (1989), citing Welsh v. Texas Department of
— ——
Highways, 483 U.S. 468, 494 (1987). Even in
2 —————eE
constitutional cases, stare decisis “carries such
persuasive force that we have always required a
departure from precedent to be supported by some
special jus tif ication““ Arizona v. Rumsey, 467 U.S.
203, 212 (1984), cited in Panne v. Tennessee, 111
S. Ct. 2597 (1991) (Souter, J., concurring).
In Planned Parenthood, the Court pointed to
several "prudential and pragmatic considerations
designed to test the consistency of overruling a prior
decision with the ideal of the rule of law." 112 S.Ct.
-44-
at 2808. The weight accorded stare decisis at a
minimum means that no case should be overruled
unless the outcome of the subsequent case would be
different. Overruling Lemon does not change the
result here. On any historically or precedently
grounded test, KJSD is unconstitutional.
The criteria to which the Court pointed in
Planned Parenthood are: 1) whether the rule is
unworkable in practical terms; 2) whether there is
some special kind of societal reliance on the prior
rule; 3) whether related principles of law developed
so as to leave the old rule a remnant of a repudiated
approach; and 4) whether social circumstances have
changed so as to leave the old rule without application
or justification. And although unstated in Planned
Parenthood , implicit in its discussion was the question
of whether the prior case was wrongly decided.
Applied to Lemon each of these criteria (which we
take up in slightly different order) negates the
existence of "special circumstances" which are a
-45-
necessary predicate to overruling a constitutional
decision.
A. Lemon Is Not Unworkable
One of the common criticisms of Lemon, echoed
by some of the Petitioners, is that the tripartite test
of Lemon is not workable, that it does not lead to
predictable results. Petitioners assert that their
proposed test will solve these problems. But
Petitioner KJSD's suggestion that the rubric of
"sponsorship, financial support and active involve-
ment in religious activity" is more readily applied
than the Lemon test does not withstand scrutiny.
Does funding religious based sex education
constitute "financial support" of religion? See Bowen
v. Kendrick, 487 U.S. 589 (1988). What of aid to
parochial schools in its various forms? Compare
Grand Rapids School District v. Ball, 473 U.S. 373
(1985) with PEARL v. Regan, 444 U.S. 646 (1980). Is
display of a municipal creche "active involvement in
-46-
religious activity"? Compare County of Allegheny v.
A.C.L.U., supra, with Lynch v. Donnelly, supra. Does
inviting a minister to offer a prayer at high school
graduation constitute “sponsorship... or active
involvement in religious activity"? Lee v. Weisman,
supra. What about permitting students to offer such
a prayer upon vote of their peers? Compare, Jones v.
Clear Creek ISD, 977 F.2d 963 (5th Cir. 1992) with
Gearon v. Loudoun County School Bd., 93-730-A (E. D.
Va. 1993).
Nor is certainty of adjudication materially
advanced by adopting a “coercion” standard,“ as
Justice Kennedy, joined, inter alia, by Justice Scalia,
suggested in County of Allegheny v. A.C.L.U., supra.
Justices Kennedy and Scalia themselves disagreed
over the application of that standard in Lee v.
19. The difficulty the courts had in admunistering the coercion
test prior to Miranda v. Arizona, 384 US. 436 (1966) is
instructive.
-47-
Weisman, 112 S.Ct. 2649 (1992), both finding it an
easy case, one confident that coercion existed, 112
S.Ct. at 2658-59, the other insisting the claim was
"incoherent." 112 S.Ct. at 2681.
The problem is not that the existing Lemon
Standard is unworkable, as Petitioners charge.
Lower courts have managed to apply Lemon for a
quarter of a century. Rather, it is the difficulty of
applying the Establishment Clause to a kaleidoscope
of fact patterns, each with its own unique twists,
that creates difficult cases. Cases reaching this
Court in particular are likely to be hard, and will
often call for careful line-drawing. Any test that
both takes the Constitution seriously and respects
democratic self-governance will require careful line-
drawing. Lemon does both.
Petitioners' quarrel is not with the Court's
formulation of a test; it is that the Court's decisions
take the Establishment Clause seriously. That
Clause, ata minimum, bars joint exercises of power
-48-
by religion and government, and it will, of necessity,
limit religion and religious institutions in at least some
ways not applicable to secular ideologies and
institutions.
B. The Lemon_Rule Is Fully
Woven Into The Texture
Of The Law
In calling for the overruling of Lemon,
Petitioners are challenging more than just its three-
part test. The Lemon test did not spring full blown
from the brow of Zeus. In announcing it, Chief
Justice Burger did not purport to announce a new
rule. Instead, he anchored the tripartite test firmly
in past decisions:
Three such tests may be gleaned from our
cases. First, the statute must have a
secular legislative purpose; second, its
principal or primary effect must be one
that neither advances nor inhibits religion,
Board of Education v. Allen, 392 U.S. 236
(1968); finally, the statute must not foster
an excessive government entanglement
with religion.' Walz, supra, at 674.
(emphasis added)
403 U.S. at 612-13.
-49-
Ironically, Chief Justice Burger, citing Walz,
said that this tripartite test was intended to flesh out
the "three main evils against which the Establishment
Clause was intended to afford protection:
‘sponsorship, financial support, and active
involvement in religious activity, 403 U.S. at 612,
the very test that KJSD says should take the place of
the three-part test. The grounding of Lemon in the
part of Walz to which Petitioners point was again
emphasized in PEARL v. Nyquist, supra, 413 U.S. at
770-73. The purpose _ effect branches of Lemon
were lifted in hac verba from School District of Abington
Township v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 222 (1963). The
entanglement branch came directly from Walz, the
very case that Petitioners say reflects a truer
understanding of the Establishment Clause than
Lemon
20. Tellingly, Petitioners and their amici offer no single
alternative to Lemon. KJSD suggests language from Waiz, but
(continued...)
-50-
In sum, Petitioners take aim not just at Lemon,
but at all those cases whose holdings it subsumes.
Just as certainly, because Lemon is so firmly rooted
in all of this Court's modern Establishment Clause
jurisprudence, and because it has well served the
interests of religious freedom and peace that stare
decisis powerfully calls for its reaffirmation, not its
demise.
C. Lemon Was Correctly Decided
The Court has repeatedly canvassed the history
of the First Amendment, and concluded that it
embodies a principle of neutrality, not just non-
preferentialism, which has been the major alternative
offered by critics of Lemon. Although the Court's
20.(..continued)
as demonstrated, that language gave birth to the Lemon test.
Monroe Woodbury proffers either a non-preferential approach
inconsistent with the Clause’s history, or a general acceptance
of anything labelled accommodation. Amici supporting
Petitioners propose various alternatives, from abandoning the
effect test, to modifying it, to adoption of a pure coercion test.
The lack of a self-evidently better rule upon which all of
Lemon's critics can agree is further reason not to overturn
Lemon.
afte
accepted reading of the Establishment Clause as
embodying a policy of separation has been
challenged, R. Cord, Separation of Church and State
(1982), more recent historical research by scholars
such as Leonard Levy, 2 Thomas Curry” and
Douglas Laycock ,# proves that the non-
preferentialist approach is historically untenable, as
even scholars critical of "separationism"
acknowledge. M. McConnell, Religion at the
Crossroads, 59 U. Chi. L. Rev. 115, 146, n. 142 (1990).
D. There Has Been Substantial
Reliance on Lemon
Moreover, given Lemon's origin as a restatement
of prior law, its demise, particularly on the unusual
facts presented here, would cast doubt on every
prior decision of this Court, and of the lower courts,
21. L.W. Levy, The Establishment Clause: Religion and The
First Amendment (1986).
22. Curry, First Freedoms, supra.
23. D. Laycock, Non-Preferential Aid to Religion: A False
Claim About Intent, 27 Wm. & Mary L.Rev. 875 (1986).
-52-
all of which now, and for almost 25 years, have
regularly applied Lemon. Overruling Lemon would
not elucidate questions encountered by the courts
with greater frequency than the unusual one
presented here. Abandoning Lemon here would
gratuitously impose upon legislatures, state attorneys
generals and school boards the burden of re-
litigating issues long settled, certainly legally, and,
in large part, socially as well, and all to no point,
because the judgment below would in any event be
reaffirmed.
V
KIRYAS JOEL SCHOOL DISTRICT
IS NOT A PERMISSIBLE FORM
OF ACCOMMODATION
Some of Petitioners and their amici also urge that
Lemon should be overruled because it interferes with
the accommodation of minority religions and hence
does not respond to the changes in social reality of
late 20th century America. [KJSD Brief at 40-43;
Monroe-Woodbury Brief at 45-49.] They complain
-53-
that under Lemon, the Establishment Clause wholly
swallows up the Free Exercise Clause, and with it any
notion of accommodation. We agree that a reading of
the Establishment Clause that prohibited any
accommodation would be wrong. But Lemon does not
countenance, much less mandate, such a departure
from neutrality. The same court which decided
Lemon decided Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205
(1972), perhaps this Court's most far reaching
application of the doctrine of accommodation.
Petitioners also fail to explain why their
proposals would not allow the accommodation doctrine
to swallow up the Establishment Clause, especially in
those cases where a particular accommodation is
discretionary, not mandatory, as concededly is the
case here. [KJSD Brief at 42.
Apart from the untenable nature of the
argument, which flies in the face of numerous
"accommodation" decisions, Petitioners’ accommo-
dation argument is also not new; practically every
-54-
practice that has been condemned by this Court as an
establishment has been defended as an accommo-
dation. See, eg., Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421
(1962); Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38 (1985); Lee v.
Weisman , supra. And while there may be somewhat
greater religious diversity now than when Lemon was
decided, the problem of accommodation was far from
unknown then, even for radically separatist sects.
Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972); Sherbert v.
Verner, 374 U.S. 398 (1963). The difficulty of
reconciling accommodation and separation was also not
unknown before the Lemon test was formulated,
Skerbert v. Verner, supra , 374 U.S. at 422 (Harlan, J.,
dissenting) =
Defining the boundaries of permissible
accommodation has proven quite difficult for this
24. If there is a contemporary threat to accommodation — and
there is it comes from this Court’s decision m Employment
Dimsion v. Smith, 494 US. 872 (1990), a Free Exercise Clause
decision, not from its Establishment Clause decisions.
-55-
Court as the several opinions in Texas Monthly v.
Bullock , 489 U.S. 1 (1989) demonstrate. Amici are
quite certain that the solution does not lie either in
committing all accommodation to the unfettered
discretion of the legislature, as this Court
unfortunately did in Employment Division v. Smith,
supra , or in permitting anything that can plausibly be
called an accommodation to pass constitutional
muster, a proposition rejected in Estate of Thornton v.
Caldor, Inc., 472 U.S. 703 (1985).
This Court's cases suggest several limitations.
Accommodation imposing significant costs or burdens
on, or compelling religious conformity of, other
persons, will generally be impermissible. Estate of
Thorton v. Caldor, Inc, supra. There is some
evidence that religious conformity is insisted upon
here, J. Mintz, Hasidic People, supra; Waldman v.
UTA , 147 Misc. 2d 529, 558, 558 N. E. 2d 781 (Sup. Ct.
Orange County, 1990).
-56-
Justice O'Connor has suggested that an
accommodation must remove an active state-created
burden from the shoulders of the believer, and that,
absent such a burden, government support for
religion is an establishment, not an accommodation.
Wallace v. Jaffree, supra, 472 U.S. at 81-83. Since
Petitioners have disclaimed any separatist religious
doctrine that would, as a religious matter, prohibit
them from attending classes under secular control,
see KJSD Brief at 7, it is difficult to see what state-
created burden on religious practice the New York
legislature has removed by creating KJSD.™ Under
Justice O'Connor's Jaffree formulation, too, KJSD is
an establishment of religion.
25. Ami are not qualified to pass on the question of whether
the Satmar Hasidim have a forma! religious mandate requiring
separatism. They do note that religion consists of a mix of
formal beliefs, mandatory practices or ceremonies, and
customary observances. Each faith has its own nuanced
version of these principles, frequently unmtelligible to the
outsider, and always difficult to explam and delineate. These
various sources of practice, ceremony or belief may be all
religious for constitutional purposes, even if not formally
mandated. See Callahan v. Wood, 658 F 2d 679 (9th Cir. 1981)
-57-
The problem of accommodation arises from a
tension between the Establishment and Free Exercise
Clauses. It makes sense to accommodate religion in
ways that drain neither Clause of its core meaning.
That was the cautious approach taken by Justices
Blackmun and O'Connor in Texas Monthly v. Bullock ,
supra .
In Texas Monthly, the Court invalidated a sales
tax exemption for religious periodicals but not for
competing secular ones. After explaining why it was
so difficult to settle on a precise formulation of a test
for distinguishing permissible and impermissible
accommodation, Justice Blackmun explained that "a
Statutory preference for the dissemination of
religious ideas offends our most basic understanding
of what the Establishment Clause is all about and
hence is constitutionally intolerable.” 489 U.S. at 28.
An effort to "create political constituencies along
religious lines” is likewise "constitutionally
intolerable.” Creating such constituencies is not an
-58-
accommodation that a government bound by the
Establishment Clause can offer.
THE PRESENCE OF CONSTITUTIONAL
MEANS OF DELIVERING EDUCATIONAL
SERVICES DOOMS KJSD
The effort to label KJSD an accommodation of
religion despite its utter incompatibility with the
Establishment Clause falters for yet another reason --
it is an accommodation far more intrusive on
Establishment Clause values than need be to ensure
services to the disabled children of Kiryas Joel.
Such excessive intrusion leads inescapably to the
conclusion that KJSD was created not as an accommo-
dation, but rather as an advanceme t, of religion, as
the New York Court of Appeals held.
The record suggests that the gap between
Hasidic children and their public school peers was so
great that it was not educationally feasible to put
them in the same classroom. We accept for the moment
the truth of these claims. Monroe-Woodbury School
District had available to it a ready remedy that would
-59-
not have impinged on the Establishment Clause -- the
use of a so-called "neutral site," under the control of
the Monroe-Woodbury School Board, but serving only
Hasidic children. If selected for secular reasons,
such as ensuring the educational effectiveness of the
instruction provided, or providing bilingual
instruction in Yiddish, such neutral siting is
constitutional.
Wolman v. Walter, 433 U.S. 229 (1977) is
dispositive. There, the Court held that it would be
constitutional to provide remedial services to
parochial school students in off-premise facilities:
The fact that a unit on a neutral site on
occasion may serve only sectarian pupils
does not provoke the same concerns that
troubled the Court in Meek. The influence
on a therapist's behavior that is exerted by
the fact that he serves a sectarian pupil is
qualitatively different from the influence of
the pervasive atmosphere of a religious
institution. The dangers (of improper
effect and entanglement) perceived in Meek
arose from the nature of the institution,
not from the nature of the pupils.
433 U.S. at 244.
-60-
Aguilar v. Felton, 473 U.S. 402 (1985) reinforced
this rule, even as it emphasized that secular
instruction could not take place on the premises of
parochial schools. In her dissent, Justice O'Connor
explained the majority's ruling:
Our Establishment Clause decisions have
not banned remedial assistance to parochial
school children, but rather remedial
assistance on the premises of the parochial
school. Under Wolman .. the New York
city classes prohibited by the Court today
would have survived Establishment Clause
scrutiny if they had been offered in a
neutral setting off the property of. the
private school. (emphasis added)
473 U.S. at 420. The lower federal courts since
Aguilar have uniformly upheld off-premises arrange-
ments.
The difference between a neutral site and KJSD
is plain. The neutral site would create no political
entity along religions lines. No religious group
26. Barrnes v. Cavazos, 934 F 2d 912 (8th Cir. 1992); Pulido
v. Cavazos, 966 F 2d 1056 (6th Cir. 1991) (dismissing appeal on
procedural grounds; court below in accord); Walker v. San
Francisco U.S.D., 761 F Supp. 1463 (N.D. Cal. 1991), appeal
pending (9th Cir.)
ie
controls the neutral site. Students who do not wish
to avail themselves of the neutral site, and who
prefer to participate in the regular school, are free to
do so. Given the existence of KJSD, a disabled
student in the Village of Kiryas Joel who desires a
public school education is coerced to attend a
religiously segregated public school, the equivalent
of state imposed racial segregation. And for the
reasons expressed in Wolman, the neutral site does
ad By contrast,
not otherwise establish religion.
KJSD does all of these forbidden things. It therefore
falls on the wrong side of the constitutional line.
27. The New York Court of Appeals recognized that neutral
sites were an available alternative, Bd. of Educ. v. Weider, 72
N.Y 2d 174, 531 N.Y 2d 889, 527 N.E 2d 767 (1988), but felt
itself powerless to order it. This Court, however, has the
power to enter such order “as is just“, 28 USC. 2106. In
light of ten years of litigation and the urgent need of the
Hasidic children for special education, it would seem “just” for
this Court to order Petitioner Monroe-Woodbury School
District to implement a neutral ite plan, or to cast its mandate
so that the New York Court of Appeals may do so.
-62-
CONCLUSION
These are perilous times for common school
education. The very idea of a common school is under
broad attack, and with it the premise, implicit in
cases such as Brown v. Bd. of Educ. , supra, that public
schools have an obligation to serve all children.
KJSD dismisses the unfairness of creating a
school district for this religious community. It
Suggests that no other group is likely to be as
seriously affected. [KJSD Brief at 46-47.] The claim
ignores the many religious communities intensely
dissatisfied with the public schools over creationism,
outcome based education, sex education and ‘secular
humanism’. They (and their opponents) would be
happy to create fiefdoms of religious or non-religious
homogeneity this Court confers its constitutional
blessings on KJSD.
-63-
When all is said and done, this is an easy case.
The judgment below must be affirmed.
February 23, 1994
—
*
Norman Redlich
Marc D. Stern
Counsel of Record
American Jewish Congress
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
(212) 360-1545
APPENDIX
APPENDIX A
MEMBER ORGANIZATIONS OF
THE NATIONAL JEWISH COMMUNITY
RELATIONS ADVISORY COUNCIL
Birmingham JCC
Greater Phoenix Jewish Federation
Tucson Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona
Greater Long Beach and West Orange County
Jewish Community Federation
Los Angeles CRC of Jewish Federation-Council
Oakland Greater East Bay JCRC
Orange County Jewish Federation
Sacramento JCRC
San Diego CRC of United Jewish Federation
San Francisco JCRC
Greater San Jose JCRC
Greater Bridgeport Jewish Federation
Greater Danbury CRC of Jewish Federation
Eastern Connecticut Jewish Federation
Greater Hartford CRC of Jewish Federation
New Haven Jewish Federation
Greater Norwalk Jewish Federation
Stamford United Jewish Federation
Waterbury Jewish Federation
JCRC of Connecticut
Wilmington Jewish Federation of Delaware
Greater Washington JCC
South Broward Jewish Federation
Greater Fort Lauderdale Jewish Federation
Jacksonville Jewish Federation
Greater Miami Jewish Federation
Greater Orlando Jewish Federation
Palm Beach County Jewish Federation
Pinellas County Jewish Federation
Sarasota-Manatee Jewish Federation
South County Jewish Federation
Atlanta Jewish Federation
Savannah Jewish Council
NJCRAC MEMBER ORGANIZATIONS A-2
Metropolitan Chicago JCRC of the Jewish
United Fund
Peoria Jewish Federation
Springfield Jewish Federation
Indianapolis JCRC
South Bend Jewish Federation of St. Joseph Valley
JCRC of Indiana
Greater Des Moines Jewish Federation
Lexington Central Kentucky Jewish Federation
Louisville Jewish Community Federation
Greater Baton Rouge Jewish Federation
Greater New Orleans Jewish Federation
Shreveport Jewish Federation
Portland Southern Maine Jewish
Federation-Community Council
Baltimore JCRC
Greater Boston JCRC
Marblehead North Shore Jewish Federation
Greater New Bedford Jewish Federation
Springfield Jewish Federation
Worcester Jewish Federation
Metropolitan Detroit JCC
Flint Jewish Federation
Minneapolis Minnesota and Dakotas JCRC-
Anti-Defamation League
Greater Kansas City Jewish Community
Relations Bureau
St. Louis JCRC
Omaha JCR Committee of Jewish Federation
Atlantic County Federation of Jewish Agencies
Central New Jersey Jewish Federation
Clifton-Passaic Jewish Federation
Delaware Valley Jewish Federation
Metrowest United Jewish Federation
Greater Middlesex County Jewish Federation
Northern New Jersey JCRC
Southern New Jersey JCRC of Jewish Federation
Albuquerque JCC
Binghamton Jewish Federation of Broome County
Greater Buffalo Jewish Federation
NJCRAC MEMBER ORGANIZATIONS A-3
Elmira CRC of Jewish Welfare Fund
Greater Kingston Jewish Federation
Northeastern New York United Jewish Federation
Greater Orange County Jewish Federation
Rochester Jewish Community
Syracuse Jewish Federation
Utica Jewish Federation
Akron Jewish Community Federation
Canton Jewish Community Federation
Cincinnati JCRC
Cleveland Jewish Community Federation
Columbus CRC of Jewish Federation
Greater Dayton CRC of Jewish Federation
Greater Toledo CRC of Jewish Federation
Youngstown JCRC of Jewish Federation
Oklahoma City JCC
Tulsa JCC
Portland Jewish Federation
Allentown CRC of Jewish Federation
Erie JCC
Greater Philadelphia JCRC
Pittsburgh CRC of United Jewish Federation
Scranton-Lackawanna Jewish Federation
Greater Wilkes-Barre Jewish Federation
Providence CRC of Rhode Island Jewish Federation
Charleston JCR Committee
Columbia CRC of Jewish Welfare Federation
Memphis JCRC
Nashville and Middle Tennessee Jewish Federation
Austin JCC
Greater Dallas JCRC of Jewish
Community Federation
El Paso JCR Committee
Fort Worth Jewish Federation
Greater Houston Jewish Federation
San Antonio JCR of Jewish Federation
Newport News-Hampton United Jewish Community of
the Virginia Peninsula
Richmond Jewish Community Federation
Tidewater United Jewish Federation
NJCRAC MEMBER ORGANIZATIONS
Greater Seattle Jewish Federation
Madison JCC
Milwaukee Jewish Council
This is a copy of a public record, reproduced as it was published. It is not legal advice, and it may not be the version a court would rely on. Check the official source before you cite it.