Chicago Jewish Leaders React to High Court Decision on Skokie

Two leaders of the Chicago Jewish community declared in a joint statement today that the Supreme Court decision to let stand lower court rulings holding unconstitutional three Skokie Village ordinances barring marches in Skokie by the tiny Chicago Nazi Party “leaves the illegality of such a provocative march” in the heavily Jewish suburb “still undermined.” Other spokesmen differed.

The Supreme Court at its Monday session declined to review lower court rulings — by a seven to two decision– that the Skokie Village violated the First Amendment by adopting three ordinances to prevent the tiny Nazi Party from implementing a threat to stage a march in suburban Skokie, home of some 7000 Holocaust survivors. After the tiny band of Nazis won lower court rulings they had a constitutional right to march in Skokie, they cancelled a scheduled June 25 demonstration in Skokie and staged two rallies in Chicago later.

The joint statement by David Smerling, president of the Jewish United Fund (JUF) and Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago, and Raymond Epstein, chairman of the JUF Public Affairs Committee (PAC), also said that “we in the Jewish community would have preferred the High Court to review the matter so that the case by the Village of Skokie and a companion suit instituted on be-half of the Holocaust survivors living there could have been decided by the Supreme Court on the merits of the case.”

Sol Goldstein, chairman of the PAC committee on individual liberty and Jewish security, a Holocaust survivor and Skokie resident who initiated a separate suit on behalf of the survivors, declared that the Supreme Court decision “is the law” but that he felt “very disappointed” about how the High Court interpreted the First Amendment.

Goldstein contended that the Nazis coming to Skokie “is not a question of free speech,” as the lower courts had held. “They came to tell us that too many Jews are left alive and that they did not finish up with us. This is not a question of needing new laws but enacting a different interpretation of existing laws.”

A contention by a lawyer in the case that the Supreme Court decision did not, “contrary to the general impression,” really represent “the court’s views of the merits of the case” was offered by Jerome Torshen, head of a volunteer committee of attorneys representing Goldstein. Torshen said that the ruling “could mean that the court approves of the lower court decisions but it could also mean that the decision was not reviewed because the case was moot.” He asserted that “if the Nazis should apply for a new permit to march in Skokie, the case against such a permit could be framed differently.”