Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor put on hold a lower court’s order requiring Yeshiva University in New York to recognize an LGBTQ student club while legal fights continue about the group’s efforts at YU.
A New York state trial court ruled that as a public accommodation, Yeshiva was covered under the New York City Human Rights Law and required to provide the Pride Alliance the same access to facilities as dozens of other student groups. The group said that means access to a classroom, bulletin boards and a club fair booth.
Sotomayor’s short order stayed that ruling “pending further order of the undersigned or of the Court.” That might indicate the court did not have adequate time to review the issue. She is the justice who reviews emergency applications from the New York region, although such requests usually are referred to the entire court.
Appellate courts in the state have not yet considered Yeshiva’s appeal, but denied the university’s emergency request to not comply with the lower court decision.
In a filing asking the Supreme Court to step in, the university said that “as a deeply religious Jewish university, Yeshiva cannot comply with that order because doing so would violate its sincere religious beliefs about how to form its undergraduate students in Torah values.”
The school is represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which called the lower court ruling an “unprecedented” violation of the university’s First Amendment rights.
The student group said the lower court’s decision was a straightforward interpretation of state law. It said the Supreme Court’s intervention was unwarranted, especially before New York’s own appellate courts have had the chance to weigh in.
“This ruling does not touch the University’s well-established right to express to all students its sincerely held beliefs about Torah values and … orientation,” the group said in its filing at the Supreme Court. At the same time, the filing adds, “it may not deny certain students access to the non-religious resources it offers the entire student community on the basis of … orientation.”
The school does not require its officers or professors to be Jewish and it enrolls 5,000 undergraduate and graduate students of all religious backgrounds, the group said. Its affiliated Cardozo Law School has had an official toeivah students group for years.
(c) 2022, The Washington Post · Robert Barnes
Faith wins. A star to see.
The court acted Friday in a brief order signed by Justice Sonia Sotomayor that indicated the court would have more to say on the topic at some point.
When is that point of time? If soon then it is good news because the current makeup of the supreme court will probably side wide. If it is at some hazy future date that is bad news. It means Sotomayer is pushing off until the supreme court is more liberal and less likely to side with YU
I really like your speculation.
It was 1947 when Stalin had all his subordinate nations (The Communist Bloc) vote with the 33-14 majority in favor of the UN’s Partition Plan for Palestine. Some observers praised Stalin’s support. Other seasoned observers speculated that he supported the creation of a Jewish State in the hope that many Jews would move there thereby facilitating the objective of the total annihilation of Jewry, ch’v. He correctly perceived that the Arabs will never accept us and will, in the short term, launch an invasion.
I believe that Justice Sotomayor’s motivation mirrors Stalin’s motivation vis-a-vis “Palestine.” I am certain that she does not support YU’s position. Instead, I believe she is “playing the long game” so that a more favorably populated future Supreme Court will be positioned to win another one for the liberal left.
We can’t allow the UNELECTED privileged white female Kathy Hochul to become our next Governor. She is rotten to the core.
You preferred her predecessor?
We prefer her successor.
Vote for Lee Zeldin. If not, YOU will be responsible for hashchasa agenda in New York State.
It is sad that this is at all an issue
YU deserves this as its a problem of their own making that no other yeshiva or truly religious institution would face. This is because a truly religious institution would expel any student, and certainly a group, who publicly proclaim they are proud to violate a severe prohibition of the religion. The problem for YU is that while it speaks of ” its sincere religious beliefs about how to form its undergraduate students in Torah values” they said in a statement, that they have an “inclusive policy’ towards their students and they are welcome there. If it was actually sincere about forming “its undergraduate students in Torah values” it would expel them for being against all that torah values holds dear.
if it were possible to do what you say, other universities would have quotas as they used to
and expel Jewish students they admitted without realizing they’re Jewish……
Today YU and tomorrow who is it going to be? Probably a place near and dear to your heart. It definitely could be, it’s very easy. Unfortunately there are so many activists in those alphabet groups, they just want to take down people are establishments for their own agenda, they don’t care.
This is a very slippery slope and while I have ave my own opinion of this school, It is a very slippery slope. They got themselves into this mess by allowing all their openness, which could lead to them losing the case. I am sure they’re going to have to explain why they allowed everything until now and suddenly it’s an issue because, they have lots of ‘splainin to do..
Will you support xian institutions expelling Jews who would like to study Chemistry or Engineering and do not hide being Jewish?
I guess you don’t follow the real news of the weekend. NYS just passed a law requiring all religious institutions, aka yeshivos to teach secular studies as the state deems fit. That is the current wokeness of libtard America. That lbgtq+. That is Heather has 2 Mommies. This is coming to every main stream mosaad now. Unless we daven to Hashem to overturn this gezeira and vote republican straight down the line. Just an aside, have you forgotten all those children that were sadly molested in our mosdos. That was a teaching of toieva.
i am shocked and disappointed. YU has to decide if it is a yeshiva or a university. is cordoza law school part of YU or not? is behavior that is forbidden by the Torah permissible ever? will they allow students who prefer pork over shnitzel the right to have there own kitchen? besides everything else, YU is shaming its past and present rebeiim and musmachim who are being forced to be ashamed of the school that gave them their torah education
You seem to know very little about YU.
YU is an umbrella term for many different schools. Cardoza Law for example while under the auspices of YU does not claim to be anything other than a secular school that accommodates frum students. Many of their students are non-Jews. Werzweiler school of social work (which partners with Sora Schnerier BTW) is the same story. etc. They are little different than some frum guy giving a public course on anything who accommodates and caters to frum requirements but accepts non-Jews and has no religious instruction. Those are graduate schools.
The question being discussed here is the undergraduate program. That program is split into four groups all of them having shiurim and more. The lowest level in James Strair which is intended for those who did not grow up frum and has little more than a few daily shiurim for those know little about Judaism. The highest level is “masmidim program” which is basically what it sounds like other than additional secular studies in the afternoon.
It is the undergraduate program that this fight is about . Being that the undergraduate program has an equal program to any secular college for a technical classification for government aid they are a secular school. Why should the fact that they also have a religious program disqualify them from such aid? What makes them less deserving than any other private college with regard to funding when they both do the same function and are privately owned? But in SUBSTANCE they remain a religious school and should therefore qualify for religious exemption of not being required to treat the toaveh crowd as sacred. They do not receive any government funding for the religious instruction part of the day . That is a small part of what is YU is saying.