NYCLU on Lawrence Orthodox Proposal
Just got off the phone with Donna Lieberman of the New York Civil Liberties Union regarding the proposal to get some Long Island Orthodox Jews into public schools by granting some favors: busing from a synagogue; keeping Orthodox students grouped in the same classes; allowing the families to rent school space for privately-hired Jewish studies instruction after school hours.
Lieberman was against all of them, as individual and group proposals. “What I see here is a special package of privileges, and I think that the package would not survive a minute in court,” she said. Asked if a specific item, such as the busing, could stand on its own, she said “It’s hard to break it up, and I’d rather not talk in terms of hypotheticals.”
“On the one hand, government cannot discriminate against religion or religions, on the other hand, government cannot be in the business of promoting religion,” she said, “whatever the federal standard is…New York State has an even stronger tradition of respecting the divide” (that last bit is something I’d like to look into more).
And what if the opportunity is offered to any religious group that comes asking? “That’s not good enough, because the school is promoting religion by giving special dispensation for religious instruction,” she said.
July 11th, 2005 at 2:27 pm
As long as the school district does not discriminate and makes their facilities available for after school instruction for any group that desires to use that space, there wouldn’t be any constitutional issues if one of those groups happens to be a religious group.
July 12th, 2005 at 11:31 am
Forget church and state, what about Brown v. Board of Education?
See Justice Kennedy’s concurring opinion in Kiryas Joel v. Grumet.