The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether Jews are protected by the U.S. civil rights laws. No date has been set yet for arguments on the case.
Opening its new term Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the appeal of Shaare Tefila Congregation, a Conservative synagogue in the Washington suburb of Silver Spring, Maryland, that was defaced in November 1984 with anti-Semitic epithets and Nazi symbols.
Eight men were charged in criminal court, one of whom was convicted of destroying property. But the 500-member congregation filed for damages under two federal civil rights laws passed after the Civil War to protect Blacks.
However, last March the Fourth District Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, upheld a ruling by a federal district court in Maryland that the statutes did not apply to Jews because they are not members of a separate race.
The Supreme Court also agreed to hear the case of an Iraqi-born U.S. citizen who sued St. Francis College in Loretto, Pennsylvania, charging that he was denied tenure because he is an Arab.
SENDING A CLEAR AND EMPHATIC MESSAGE
Irvin Shapell, president of the Jewish Advocacy Center, said Shaare Tefila originally brought the suit “to send the clear and emphatic message that anti-Semitic violence will not be tolerated and that Jews will fight back to the fullest extent of the law.”
The Jewish Advocacy Center, a nonprofit legal service organization which represents without charge victims of anti-Semitic violence in civil damages lawsuits, and the Washington law firm of Hogan and Hartson are representing the congregation in the suit.
“Although the congregation does not claim that Jews are a separate race, it does argue that Jews are entitled to protection if acts of hate violence against them are racially motivated,” Shapell said. “Courts should not decide whether someone is entitled to protection based on their racial makeup, but rather based on the nature of the attack against them,” he said.
“Many people and groups suffer ‘racial’ attacks even though they are not considered a ‘race.’ Those people and groups are entitled to the same protection under federal law given to others,” Shapell stated.
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