Copyright 1994 Seattle Post-Intelligencer  
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
March 31, 1994, Thursday , FINAL
SECTION: NEWS                                LENGTH: MEDIUM: Pg. A3

LENGTH: 527 words

HEADLINE: PUBLIC SCHOOL FOR DISABLED JEWS ARGUED ;
SUPREME COURT COULD RESET THE CHURCH-STATE BOUNDARIES

BYLINE: Elizabeth Schwinn Hearst Newspapers

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

BODY:  The creation of a special school district to serve disabled youngsters of an ultraorthodox Jewish sect in New York does not violate the constitutional separation of church and state, attorneys for the district and state told the Supreme Court yesterday.

Defending a 1989 New York state law that created the district in Kiryas Joel, about 40 miles north of New York City, attorney Nathan Lewin told the court, "We believe it is in the spirit of accommodation" of religion offered by the Constitution's First Amendment.

Lewin asked the court to overturn a 1992 New York court decision that the special district unconstitutionally created a "symbolic union" between the state and the religious sect.

But Jay Worona, arguing for state school board officials, said the district's existence violates the separation of church and state by "imbuing a religious community with governmental powers and functions."

The court's ruling, expected to come by June, could be the most significant decision in several decades on the separation of church and state, setting new boundaries on how far governments may go to accommodate religious practices. Conservative members of the court have been trying to make it easier for governments to sanction religion in public institutions. But the court's moderates and liberals have resisted those efforts.

New York officials are asking the high court to let stand the 1989 law that created the special district, which costs $6 million a year and serves about 200 disabled children belonging to the Satmar Hasidic sect. Nearly every resident of Kiryas Joel belong to the sect.

The 5,000 nondisabled children of Kiryas Joel attend private religious schools, but those schools lack the facilities to accommodate children with disabilities. In addition, federal and state laws mandate that public money must be available to help educate children with disabilities.

Before the new school district was created, Satmar children with disabilities were bused to a nearby public school district, where their special needs were not met, argued Julie Mereson, New York state assistant attorney general.

"They were traumatized by being in an environment that was completely alien to them," said Mereson, adding that the sect's children speak Yiddish and "do not have radio or TV."

Mereson said that by establishing Kiryas Joel school district, the state was "tolerating and accommodating" the Satmar religion, as it is required to do by law - but not advancing it.

But Justice Sandra Day O'Connor took issue with the state's solution, asking, "Isn't it a dangerous precedent to let the state tackle an accommodation by singling out a particular situation rather than passing a neutrally applicable law?"

Justice Antonin Scalia, however, suggested that the district was designed to meet the children's cultural needs, and not their religious needs.

Attorney Worona, arguing on behalf of Louis Grumet, head of the state's school board association, said that although the citizens of Kiryas Joel are entitled to public education, they are not entitled to a segregated school district supported with public money.

wr/md

NOTES:
U.S. SUPREME COURT

GRAPHIC: Photo
The Associated Press:  Orthodox Jews protest in front of the Supreme Court against putting Jewish children in public schools.

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