BODY: Three times since 1991, state
courts ruled that a public school district populated entirely by Hasidic
children in Orange County, N.Y., violated the United States Constitution's
separation of church and state. And three times, the Cuomo administration
supported the appeals.
Then last June, when the United
States Supreme Court also ruled that the law creating the district in the
village of Kiryas Joel was unconstitutional, the Cuomo
administration drafted new legislation within days of the ruling to address the
Supreme Court's concerns.
Yesterday, a state trial
court judge upheld that new law, rewarding New York State's fevered effort to
preserve the public school district for handicapped ultra-Orthodox Jewish
children.
The decision marked an important turning
point in the six-year battle by the Hasidim of Kiryas Joel to
secure publicly financed instruction for 260 handicapped and
learning-disabled children, whose parents refuse to send them to nearby public
schools with secular populations.
And the law was
affirmed yesterday by the same state judge who three years ago declared that the
original law was tailored exclusively as a favor for Kiryas
Joel and so violated the First Amendment's prohibition against the
establishment of religion.
Justice Lawrence E. Kahn of
State Supreme Court in Albany said that this time the Legislature devised a law
that was religiously neutral, "accommodating" the Hasidic residents of the
village "without singling them out for favorable treatment."
Justice Kahn acknowledged that last year's law, signed by Mr. Cuomo
within days of the Supreme Court's ruling, was enacted with "the conundrum of Kiryas Joel in mind." But, he said, the law was written in such a
way that it never mentioned Kiryas Joel and could apply to
other towns and villages.
The decision was greeted with
delight in Kiryas Joel, a village 50 miles northwest of
Manhattan whose 12,000 residents form a rural branch of the Satmar Hasidim of
Brooklyn's Williamsburg. In contrast to the deep letdown of the Supreme Court
decision, parents cheerfully called each other with the news.
"People wished everybody mazel tov because we won," said Abraham
Weider, president of the Kiryas Joel school board.
Opponents did not specifically say that they would appeal,
asserting that they were "reviewing their options."
"We
think the law is a sham, and we think the law is not a law of general
application but was designed to apply to only one district," said Louis Grumet,
executive director of the New York State School Boards Association, which
brought both the original suit and the current one.
Lisa Thurau, executive director of the National Committee for Public
Education and Religious Liberty, said the new law's rapid enactment indicated
that politicians were responding "to the pressure of that community" and
conferring an unconstitutional favor. She contended that Mr. Cuomo was eager to
win Satmar votes.
Both victors and losers agreed that,
in any appeals, the 17-page ruling could carry extra potency because it was
written by the same judge who nullified the first law.
The Kiryas Joel Village School District is a single
squat building surrounded by a spiral of suburban Hasidic homes. Except for the
handicapped children, all village children attend private yeshivas. Until
1985, handicapped children also received their government-subsidized
secular instruction at those yeshivas.
But a 1985
Supreme Court ruling barring public school teachers from providing services on
parochial school grounds forced handicapped children to attend the nearby
Monroe-Woodbury schools. There, the Hasidim said, their Yiddish-speaking
children were subjected to ridicule for their unconventional dress.
In 1989, after appeals by village leaders, the Legislature
carved out a special school district that allowed handicapped children to
remain in the village, yet receive publicly financed instruction.
After the United States Supreme Court, by a 6-3 vote,
declared that law unconstitutional, the State Legislature came up with a new
law. Seizing on an opening provided in Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's concurring
opinion, the new law permitted towns and villages inside larger school districts
to secede and organize their own school districts.
A
seceding district had to meet five criteria. It had to have at least 2,000
children and surpass the state average in wealth, yet its secession could not
adversely affect the average wealth of the larger district. That provision was
aimed at preventing wealthy villages from seceding from poorer
municipalities.
An analysis done for Mr. Grumet found
that only Kiryas Joel met all the criteria. State leaders
estimated that at least 20 villages and towns would qualify.
Yesterday, Justice Kahn ruled that "in marked contrast" to the old law,
the new law "provides a religion-neutral mechanism for all qualifying
municipalities."
Thus, he said, the Legislature's
purpose "can neither be seen as religious nor as a 'sham' but instead as valid
and secular with, at most, an ancillary purpose of accommodating religion."
GRAPHIC: Photo: "COMPARE
AND CONTRAST: Changing an Education Law"
The state
trial judge who overturned a 1989 law creating the Kiryas Joel
school district has ruled that the revised law is constitutional.
The 1989 law:
The territory
of the village of Kiryas Joel ... hereby is constituted a
seperate school district and shall be known as the Kiryas Joel
village school district and shall have and enjoy all the powers and duties of a
union free school distruct under the provisions of the education law.
The 1994 law:
Any
municipality situated wholly within a single central or union free school
district . . . may organize a new union free school district, pursuant to the
provisions of this subdivision, consisting of the entire territory of such
municipality, whenever the educational interests of the community require it.
(pg. B4)
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