Four Orthodox Jewish yeshivah elementary schools in Brooklyn, New York, have filed a complaint (full text) with the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights contending that New York City and state Education Departments are discriminating against them in violation of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The complaint (filed Jan. 13) alleges in part:
In 2022, New York adopted regulations that require private schools to undergo “substantial equivalency” reviews. Those reviews are now being used as cover to discriminate against Complainants. Specifically, New York is engaged in the following unlawful conduct:
- Targeting Jewish Studies curricula for disfavored and discriminatory treatment;
- Prohibiting Yeshivas from providing dual-language instruction;
- Forcing Yeshivas to require students to read texts from reading lists it approves;
- Interfering with Yeshivas’ constitutional autonomy to select their faculty;
- Refusing to respect cultural and religious classroom norms of the Yeshivas.
To be clear, Complainants are not challenging the 2022 regulations here. None of New York’s discriminatory practices and conduct is condoned by those regulations, let alone required by them. Rather, New York is using the leverage it thinks it has as a result of conducting those reviews to impose its secular views on these Jewish schools. When the nanny state and the secular state converge, it is no surprise that government finds no value in Jewish education and no regard for the educational choices that parents make for their children.
Jewish News Syndicate reports on the complaint.
