Two Jewish agencies seeking a Supreme Court review of Connecticut state court rulings which rejected the claim of a Presbyterian store manager that his religious rights had been violated by his being compelled to work on Sunday have been encouraged by two recent legal developments in the case, a spokesman for one of the agencies said today.
Dennis Rapps, executive director of the National Jewish Commission on Law and Public Affairs (COLPA), said one development was the action of the State of Connecticut in filing a motion on February 10 in support of COLPA’s petition for certiorari in the Supreme Court. Certiorari is a petition for review.
The petition by COLPA, with which the American Jewish Congress is associated, was filed with the high court by Nathan Lewin, a Washington attorney and COLPA vice president, on behalf of Donald Thornton, who was a manager for one of the Caldor chain stores in Connecticut.
The other development is a petition for a similar writ of certiorari for Thornton filed with the Supreme Court by the federal Department of Justice, signed by Rex Lee, U.S. Solicitor General.
Rapps told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that, given the intervention for the plaintiff by both the attorney general of Connecticut and the federal solicitor general, the possibility that the Supreme Court would decline to consider the appeal for Thornton was highly unlikely.
On the COLPA brief with Lewin are listed Rapps and Daniel Chazin, COLPA general counsel; and Lois Waldman and Marc Stem, acting director and assistant director, respectively, of the AJCongress legal staff.
CONCERN TO THE JEWISH COMMUNITY
In announcing filing of the COLPA petition, Howard Zuckerman, COLPA president, and Waldman said that the Connecticut Supreme Court ruling against Thomton,which was a ruling against the state’s Sabbath observance protection law, was of “obvious importance and concern” to the Jewish community, though the plaintiff is not a Jew and the Sabbath involved is not the Jewish Sabbath.
According to the petitions, when Thornton asked to be excused from working on Sundays, the Caldor management offered to transfer him to a store in Massachusetts or to demote him. Thornton rejected the out-of-state transfer proposal. He sued Caldor under a 1976 revision of the state’s Sunday laws, specifying no employe could be required to work on his or her Sabbath.
A lower state court ruled in Thornton’s favor, rejecting Caldor’s contention the law was unconstitutional. But the State Supreme Court reversed that decision.
The state’s high court based its decision on a revision by the Connecticut General Assembly which authorized some kinds of business to be open on Sundays but specified that the law on no work on an individual’s Sabbath remained in effect.
After the revision of the law, Caldor opened its Connecticut stores on Sunday and demanded its employes be available for work on that day. Thornton, then manager of a department in a Caldor store in Waterbury, initially submitted and worked a total of 24 Sundays in 1977 and 1978.
In 1979, he continued to work on Sundays until November when he submitted a written request to be exempt from work on his Sabbath. The proposal to demote him, if he refused an out-of-state transfer, was to a non-supervisory position, at substantially lower pay but with excusal from work on Sundays. Thornton stopped coming to work and started legal proceedings against Caldor.
BASIS FOR COLPA’S INTERVENTION
Rapps said the Thornton case was not the first time that COLPA had come to the defense of the constitutional rights of a non-Jew but he added that such cases were few and always based on issues of substantive importance to the legal rights of Jews.
He told the JTA that Thornton had not come to the Jewish agencies but that they had approached him after learning about his case from the September 6, 1983, issue of “United States Law Week,” a privately-published journal reporting on major cases throughout the United States.
Rapps said that the Supreme Court normally acts on all cases it accepts during the term it accepts them. In the Thornton case, this means the court will act by June, with the options of upholding the lower court ruling, rejecting it or ordering the case back to the lower court for review. He said the Supreme Court also could refuse to hear the case, which would mean that the lower court ruling,in this case that of the Connecticut Supreme Court rejection of Thornton’s appeal, would stand.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
