Jewish groups had lukewarm reactions to a ruling issued Wednesday by the U.S. Supreme Court that upheld California’s right to impose its 6 percent sales tax on religious books sold by religious groups.
Evangelist Jimmy Swaggart had challenged California’s decision to bill him $183,000 for taxes on his ministry’s sale of Bibles and other religious materials. He argued that the tax violated the First Amendment clause guaranteeing free exercise of religion.
But a California appeals court upheld the state’s right to impose the tax, and the Supreme Court unanimously backed that decision in its ruling Wednesday.
Dennis Rapps, executive director of the National Jewish Commission on Law and Public Affairs, or COLPA, which represents Orthodox Jews on legal matters, called the ruling “a restatement of the law.”
“It has always been true that religious institutions are taxable,” said Rapps. “I never thought the court would change its mind.”
Mare Stern, legal director of the American Jewish Congress, said he was concerned about “the ease with which the court reached the decision.”
“That there is nothing problematic” with taxing religious material “is more than a little bit disturbing,” said Stern. He said he was unhappy about the “broad brush with which the court spoke.”
Rabbi Shlomo Cunin, the Lubavitch movement’s California director, said his group is “not affected by the ruling.” He explained that the movement’s California bookstores, unlike Swaggart, paid the sales tax all along.
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