US Government Sues Jersey Shore Town For Discriminating Against Orthodox Schools

Jackson Township is discriminating against Orthodox Jews through zoning ordinances that “intentionally restrict the operation of religious schools and housing associated with such schools,” including yeshivas, the U.S. Justice Department said Wednesday.

The U.S. Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 “protects religious institutions from unduly burdensome or discriminatory land use regulations.”
Photo Credit: *@TheJusticeDept*

Jerry DeMarco

05/20/2020 12:34 p.m.

The ordinances were enacted and used “against a backdrop of extreme [animosity] by Jackson residents and township decision makers toward the Orthodox Jewish community and a movement by residents to keep Orthodox Jewish community members from settling in Jackson,” the government contends in a lawsuit.

Jackson’s planning board applied a pair of ordinances adopted by township officials that expressly prohibit dormitories in the Ocean County town, "making it impossible for religious boarding schools such as Orthodox Jewish yeshivas to establish there,” the lawsuit says.

At the same time, it says, the planning board “approved, without requiring a variance, the plans for two nonreligious projects with dormitory-type housing.”

The township -- which bills itself as the "Gateway to the Jersey Shore" -- has discriminated against the Orthodox Jewish community in violation of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA) and the Fair Housing Act (FHA), the federal government says.

RLUIPA is a federal law that “protects religious institutions from unduly burdensome or discriminatory land use regulations.”

“Religious discrimination has no place in our society and runs counter to the founding principles of our nation,” U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Craig Carpenito said. “No religious community should ever face unlawful barriers or be singled out for inferior treatment.”

“Using zoning laws to target Orthodox Jewish individuals for intentional discrimination and exclude them from a community is illegal and utterly incompatible with this Nation’s values,” added Eric Dreiband, a U.S. assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division.

“Let me be clear,” Dreiband added. “The Department of Justice will use the full force of its authority to stop such anti-Semitic conduct and prevent its recurrence.”

Jackson Township officials couldn’t immediately be reached for comment Wednesday.

Handling the case for the government is Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelly Horan Florio of Carpenito’s Civil Rights Unit, and Trial Attorney Beth Frank of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.

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