In Esses v. Rosen, (ED NY, Oct. 15, 2024), a New York federal district court refused to issue a preliminary injunction barring defendants from disseminating in plaintiff's neighborhood a rabbinical court's notice (a sieruv) that plaintiff has failed to respond to a summons from the rabbinical court. Plaintiff also asked that the seiruv be taken down or removed from places where it had been posted. Plaintiff alleged claims for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The court said in part:
While plaintiff does not dispute that she brought the claims in this case before a secular court rather than a religious one, she suggests that the seiruv is defamatory because it indicates that her doing so was “improper[].” That statement is nowhere contained in the seiruv itself. But even if the seiruv is read to convey that implication through its reference to plaintiff’s civil filing, the First Amendment would prevent this Court from second-guessing a religious court’s view of impropriety. ...
Plaintiff next claims that the instructional document distributed with the seiruv is defamatory because it falsely conveys “that the rabbis of the beth din were encouraging social ostracism and shaming in this case.” ... In any event, the Establishment Clause would preclude this Court from finding defamation on that ground. To decide whether the instructional document was true or false in its asserted characterization of plaintiff’s seiruv, the Court would be “called upon to inquire into the rules and customs governing rabbinical courts as they are utilized in the Orthodox Jewish religion,”
[Thanks to Volokh Conspiracy for the lead.]
