The American Jewish Congress today hailed as “a major victory for religious freedom” a decision by the Connecticut Supreme Court holding unconstitutional zoning-law restrictions on the operation of religious institutions.
The decision was handed down this morning on an appeal from a ruling by the Norfolk, Conn, zoning board limiting the number of days when the members of a Jewish congregation known as Beit Havurah (House of Fellowship) may worship and spend the night in the nine-room converted form house that is their synagogue.
Beit Havurah was represented in the appeal by Nathan Dershowitz, director of the AJCongress’ Commission on Law and Social Action. Wesley Horton of Hartford served as co-counsel. The Litchfield County Court of Common Pleas had up-held Beit Havurah’s status as a house of worship but rejected its objection to the zoning board action restricting overnight worship to certain holidays specified by the Board.
In 1975 some 40 young Jewish professionals purchased the form house in Norfolk, about 40 miles northwest of Hartford. It was shortly thereafter that the Norfolk zoning board sold Beit Havurah did not qualify as a permitted “church or other place of worship.”
The Supreme Court reversed this aspect of the lower court’s ruling. Justice Ellen Peters, speaking for three of the court’s five members, held that constitutional guarantees of religious liberty bar governmental agencies from determining which activities of a religious institution may be limited under zoning regulations. Any “accessory use” of its facilities by a church or synagogue the court said. must be viewed as part of its religious mission and therefore as immune to governmental regulation or restraint, unless it is found to be a public nuisance.
Commenting on today’s decision, Henry Siegman, executive director of the AJCongress, declared: “The direct effect of the court’s ruling is that Beit Havurah’s use of its property for Jewish worship and religious study may not be limited to days and hours set by a zoning board on the basis of its nation of an institution’s religious beliefs.
“However, the principles laid down by the court as the basis for this ruling go much further. They effectively guarantee the right of churches, synagogues and other religious institutions the right to conduct their operations free of burdensome and arbitrary zoning regulations.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
