Copyright 1994 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.  
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri)
August 23, 1994, TUESDAY, FIVE STAR Edition
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. 12B

LENGTH: 288 words

HEADLINE: END RUN ON THE CONSTITUTION

BODY:
Before the ink was dry on a decision striking down a separate public school district for a sect of Hasidic Jews, the New York governor was at work circumventing it.

The New York case involved the village of Kiryas Joel, a modern-day theocracy about 50 miles northwest of New York City. All 8,500 residents of Kiryas Joel are members of the ultra-orthodox Satmar sect, which rejects the trappings of modernity - television, newspapers, radios, modern fashions. Nearly all Satmar children go to the sect's private religious schools.

In 1989, the village persuaded New York to pass a law allowing it to set up a public school for the handicapped. The village wanted to avoid the ridicule and assimilation its handicapped children faced in public schools outside the community.

The Supreme Court, in one of the major decisions of the last term, voted 6-3 to strike down the law. The court said the state was showing unconstitutional favoritism to one religious sect.

But Mr. Cuomo and the legislators thought they saw an opening. Some members of the court majority said the district might have been constitutional if the state had allowed a number of towns to set up school districts. In its waning hours, the state legislature passed a law permitting many communities to set up their own districts. Mr. Cuomo signed it.

The New York School Board Association, which had challenged the first law, analyzed the new one to see how many villages complied with its size and wealth requirements. Surprise. Just Kiryas Joel. The association has gone back to court.

The lesson for Mr. Cuomo is that legal sleight-of-hand isn't enough to fulfill the fundamental commitment to the separation between church and state.

LOAD-DATE: August 24, 1994