Hasidic Sect Denied Own School District

For the third time, New York’s highest court has struck down a law designed to allow a Hasidic Jewish sect to operate its own school district for disabled youngsters.

The proposed school district in a semirural area north of New York City would violate the constitutional rule of separating church and state because it “has the primary effect of advancing one religion over others,” the Court of Appeals ruled.

The 4-3 decision continues a long judicial losing streak for the community of Kiryas Joel. The Satmar Hasidic community sends most of its children to their own private schools but wished to send disabled children to a public school to take advantage of government aid for the disabled. Rather than send the children to the local Monroe-Woodbury school district, the community’s leaders proposed establishing a public school district solely for their community.

State laws in 1989 and 1994 creating a Kiryas Joel district were struck down by the Court of Appeals, which found they were unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1997 also ruled the district illegal.

A third attempt by the state Legislature to create the district suffers from the same flaws, the court said Tuesday.

“A statute so narrowly drawn that it delegates a significant governmental power almost exclusively to a single religious group and provides no assurance that the statute’s benefits will be equally available to others is unconstitutional,” the court majority said.