The National Council of Young Israel (NCYI), in conjunction with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, recently filed a legal brief in the United States Supreme Court on behalf of a coalition of minority religious groups – including Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, and African American and Hispanic Christians – to defend the right of religious organizations to remain autonomous and to choose their members and leaders without being accused of engaging in religious discrimination.

Hastings, a state-run law school located in San Francisco, California, banned an organization called the Christian Legal Society (CLS) from the list of officially recognized student groups on campus, thereby precluding CLS from engaging in school sanctioned activities, utilizing the school facilities, and publicizing its events via school-issued email addresses. According to Hastings, CLS violates the school’s policy against discrimination on the basis of religion because CLS requires its leaders and voting members to be practicing Christians who abstain from intimacy outside of marriage.

“Should the Supreme Court choose to rule for Hastings, Jewish organizations, such as the National Council of Young Israel, may well be subject to claims of religious discrimination for refusing to let non-Jews into our leadership, which could allow them to modify our core mission,” said NCYI President Shlomo Z. Mostofsky, Esq.

“The Becket Fund is proud to be representing such a broad coalition of different faiths,” said Kevin J. “Seamus” Hasson, President of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. “They have many disagreements about theology. But they and we are united about law. In America, all faiths have the right to be who they are without interference from the government.”

Christian Legal Society meetings and events are open to all students, regardless of religious affiliation. Only its leaders and voting members, who speak on its behalf, vote on its policies, and lead its Bible studies, are required to adhere to the group’s statement of faith and abide by the code of conduct.

“The question in this case is whether the government can force religious groups to embrace individuals who do not necessarily subscribe to the same religion or even agree with the group’s mission, as the group’s new leadership,” said Mostofsky. “If so, it will not be long before the Young Israel Movement will be forced to change its name to Young Atheist or Young Evangelical, and other Orthodox Jewish organizations will lose their identification as well. It is hard to imagine a legal rule that will be more destructive to Torah Judaism in the United States.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in favor of Hastings. In what promises to be one of the biggest religious liberty cases affecting the Jewish community in decades, CLS v. Martinez, the Supreme Court will likely hear oral arguments in the spring.

Hasson noted that the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty solicited the involvement of the National Council of Young Israel because of the international organization’s century-old mission of advocating strong Jewish religious values among its members throughout North America and Israel. Based in Washington, D.C., The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty is a non-profit, public-interest law firm dedicated to protecting the free expression of all religious traditions. The Becket Fund has a 15-year history of defending religious liberty for people of all faiths. Its clients have included Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, and Sikhs.

To read the legal brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, go to http://www.becketfund.org/files/becketfundbrief.pdf

(YWN Desk – NYC)