Copyright 1994 The Denver Post 
All Rights Reserved  
The Denver Post
June 28, 1994 Tuesday 1ST EDITION
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. A-03

LENGTH: 544 words

HEADLINE: Hasidic school barred Court strikes down special public district

BYLINE: Aaron Epstein, Knight-Ridder News Service

BODY:
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court, insisting that the government cannot single out a religious group for favored treatment, yesterday struck down New York's creation of a special public school district for a sect of Hasidic Jews.

The 6-3 ruling was a victory for supporters of separation of church and state and a defeat for conservatives fighting for greater accommodation of religion.

"The decision means we won't face the prospect of fundamentalist Christian schools, Catholic schools or Muslim schools, all operating as public schools," said Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Led by Justice David Souter, the high court affirmed the rulings of New York state courts that the state legislature's creation of the Kiryas Joel Village School District in Orange County, north of New York City, was unconstitutional.

The legislature violated the fundamental principle that "government should not prefer one religion to another, or religion to irreligion," Souter declared.

The requirement of government neutrality doesn't mean the government may not relieve religion from the damaging impact of broadly applicable laws, Souter explained.

But, he added, "we have never hinted that an otherwise unconstitutional delegation of political power to a religious group could be saved as a religious accommodation."

Kiryas Joel is a religious enclave of strictly Orthodox Satmar Hasidim, which keeps boys and girls apart, educates them in religious schools, speaks Yiddish, shuns English, wears distinctive religious clothing, and avoids radio and television.

Members do not marry, buy a house, submit to medical treatment or change jobs without the consent of their Grand Rabbi.

Satmar children needing special education - such as the deaf, mentally retarded and emotionally disabled - were sent to a nearby Monroe-Woodbury public school. But their parents withdrew them, saying their unusual appearance subjected them to ridicule.

In 1989, the legislature, resolving a decade of controversy with what one state judge later called "a Solomon-like solution," authorized the village to form its own public school district.

The new district serves about 40 full-time students, two-thirds of whom are handicapped children from neighboring districts.

The Supreme Court's solid rebuff to the formation of the new district made no new law. But the sharp and bitter divisions among the justices on sensitive religious issues resurfaced, opening up a new personal war of acrimonious words - this time between Souter, the usually genial moderate, and Antonin Scalia, the court's acidic arch-conservative.

Scalia, joined by Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Clarence Thomas, issued a scathing assault on Souter's understanding of the First Amendment's ban on government "establishment of religion," the basis for the principle of church-state separation.

Calling the court decision "astounding," Scalia said Souter's opinion "takes to new extremes" the court's "recent tendency    to turn the Establishment Clause into a repealer of our Nation's tradition of religious toleration."

For his part, Souter portrayed Scalia's dissent as "the work of a gladiator, but he thrusts at lions of his own imagining."

GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Associated Press/Mike Groll ILLEGAL: A special education student arrives at Kiryas Joel School in Kiryas Joel, N.Y., yesterday.

LOAD-DATE: September 27, 1994