A New Jersey State appellate court has held, in a decision believed to be unprecedented, that the First Amendment “does not mandate hostility” toward religious practices in reversing a lower court ruling that the Teaneck school board had violated federal and state constitutions by banning extracurricular activities on Jewish and Christian holidays.
Howard Zuckerman, president of the National Jewish Commission on Law and Public Affairs (COLPA), which helped Teaneck school board attorneys in the initial legal test of the ban, said the appellate court decision could have widespread implications. He said that COLPA also had filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of the school board.
He said the Teaneck Board of Education approved the ban March 9, 1977 in a bid to end discriminatory practices in Teaneck public schools, including denial of equal opportunity to students based on religion. The board approved a resolution which provided that “to the maximum feasible extent, school activities and programs will not be scheduled on a Friday night, Saturday day, or Sunday morning.
POLICY IS CHALLENGED
The policy was challenged in November, 1978 by the Teaneck High School drama class, “The Playcrafters” when its members learned that their play, “Don’t Drink the Water,” could not be performed, as originally scheduled, on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings during the fall semester of the 1978-79 school year.
The drama class, represented by the New Jersey Civil Liberties Union, filed a suit in the chancery division of New Jersey Superior Court, the lowest state court, charging that the school board, having acted on the basis of the religious practices of some local public school students, had impermissibly entangled the school board with religion. The chancery division upheld the complaint of the Playcrafters and a three-man appellate division panel reversed that opinion in a ruling handed down in Trenton last Jan. 19.
Presiding Judge John Michels, writing for himself and the other two judges on the panel, held that “the First Amendment does not mandate hostility or callous indifference to religious practices. To do so would be to prefer those who do not believe in religion over those who do.”
The appellate division also ruled that the ban was “an effort by the Board to enable its students to participate as fully as possible in extra-curricular activities without infringing on the religious liberties of those students.”
The ruling also declared that “permissible accomodations to religion can take the form of avoiding conflicts between secular and religious activities.”
NO CONFLICT SEEN
Zuckerman, commenting that he did not know of a similar ruling in any American court, declared that the school board policy does not conflict with constitutional bans on establishment of religions but, rather, that it represented action “in keeping with the finest traditions of this nation, since essentially it guarantees all students and equal opportunity to participate in school-related activities regardless of their religious beliefs and practices.”
He asserted that if the First Amendment is held to prohibit the school board’s policy, this would amount to an implication that the church-state separation doctrine requires hostility to religion.
Zuckerman said it was important to note that the issue in the Teaneck school board policy is not whether a school was required to re-schedule school activities to avoid conflicts with religious practices of some students, but, rather, whether such re-scheduling was constitutionally permissible so as to afford equal opportunity for participation by all students.
Dennis Rapps, COLPA executive director, said the basic constitutional issue was scheduled for another court test because the Civil Liberties Union has said it will appeal the appellate division ruling to New Jersey’s State Supreme Court.
Rapps said that COLPA attorneys had already discussed the pending appeal with Teaneck school board attorneys. He said the school board ban remains in effect unless and until the State Supreme Court voids the reversal by the appellate division.
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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.
