Jewish Groups Urge High Court to Reject Appeal from Lower Court Ruling on Schechita

The U.S. Supreme Court was asked yesterday by 12 national Jewish organizations to reject, without hearing argument, an appeal from a district court ruling that the kosher slaughter provision of the 1958 federal Humane Slaughter Act was constitutional.

In a motion to affirm a decision made last April by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the Joint Advisory Committee of the Synagogue Council of America and the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council said the lower court decision was “clearly correct” and that “no further argument was needed.” Leo Pfeffer, special counsel of the American Jewish Congress and attorney for the Jewish groups, filed the motion.

The appeal was filed by a group of eight taxpayers, the Society for Animal Rights and the Committee for a Wall of Separation Between Church and State in America. The district court ruled that schechita was “historically related to considerations of humaneness” and that in making it possime for Jews to slaughter animals in accordance “with the tenets of their faith,” Congress “neither established the tenets of that faith nor interfered with the exercise of any other.”

The National Jewish Commission on Law and Public Affairs (COLPA), which represented Agudath Israel of America, the National Council of Young Israel and the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations in the case in the district court, said today it planned to urge the Supreme Court to affirm the lower court decision without further deliberation.

Nathan Lewin, COLPA vice-president, said it was beyond dispute that the statutory provisions under attack in the appeal were simply “a Congressional recognition of the weight of scientific evidence that traditional Jewish ritual slaughter and handling was humane and certainly not a preference for religion.”