The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a religious rights case this week, thereby prohibiting two Honolulu elementary schools from hiring only Protestant teachers.
Jewish groups reacted complacently to Monday’s Supreme Court ruling, which let stand a lower court decision that the elementary schools could not hire teachers of a single religious faith because the schools were not primarily religious.
Institutions considered to be religious traditionally have been exempted from federal anti-discrimination laws, and they have been permitted to hire only members of their given faith.
“I don’t think the decision will have any impact at all” on Jewish day schools and Hebrew schools, said Marc Stern, co-director of legal affairs for the American Jewish Congress.
Most Jewish schools, he said, fall easily within the definition of religious institutions and may thus hire exclusively Jewish staff.
While no major Jewish organizations declared their official support in the case, the Jewish community was watching the case for any indication that there would be limits on the right of Jewish institutions to hire only Jewish teachers.
David Zwiebel and Abba Cohen, legal representatives from Agudath Israel, a group representing the interests of fervently Orthodox Jews, said they wished the court had accepted the case.
Agudath Israel, they said, could then have filed a friend-of-the-court brief emphasizing the right of religious institutions to hire only members of one religion.
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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.
