Amicus Brief Filed In Appeal of Bankruptcy Stay of Jewish Religious Court Proceedings

As previously reported, in August a New York federal bankruptcy court held in the case of In re Congregation Birchos Yosef that the statutory automatic stay of proceedings against a debtor that is triggered by the filing of a petition in a bankruptcy reorganization applies to invalidate proceedings against a debtor and its principals in a Jewish religious court (beis din). That decision was appealed to the federal district court. Last week an interesting amicus brief (full text) was filed in that appeal by 3 well-known law professors and a former bankruptcy court judge urging reversal of the bankruptcy court's decision.  The 23-page brief argues in part:

given the intensely religious nature of the beis din proceeding, and the conceded inability of the beis din to enforce its rulings in any secular court, any effort by a bankruptcy tribunal to restrain the Bais Chinuch and other individuals from invoking the beis din as a parallel non-coercive forum of religious conscience violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, the provisions of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (hereafter RFRA), and the Bankruptcy Code.

[Thanks to Max Raskin for the lead.]