American Shtetl by Stolzenberg Nomi M.;Myers David N.;

Author:Stolzenberg, Nomi M.;Myers, David N.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2021-09-25T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

The Law of the Land

(Is the Law)

On June 27, at the end of the 1994 term, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Grumet v. Kiryas Joel, agreeing with the lower courts that Chapter 748 violated the Establishment Clause.1 The ruling was a serious setback for KJ and a victory for Grumet, Sokol, and especially Worona, whose theory of the case had prevailed and who had argued it persuasively, notwithstanding the qualms expressed by the more experienced lawyers. But the victory was not a vindication of Grumet’s belief that a separate school district for the Satmars was unconstitutional. Nor did it spell the end of the KJ School District. Instead, it laid the ground for the reauthorization of the school district under an emerging doctrine of “neutrality,” according to which political separatism was permissible as long as all groups had an equal opportunity to establish their own separate political units, not just Kiryas Joel.

The Supreme Court’s growing receptivity to this doctrine reflected the complex political currents that were simultaneously pulling people away from the integrationist paradigm and yet still appealing to the liberal value of equal rights for all. Its rise clearly reflected the increasing influence of the conservative movement. But it also was supported by growing sympathy for group rights and multiculturalism on the left. Even old-school liberals, who emphasized individual over group rights and formal over substantive equality, felt the normative pull of “neutrality.” Indeed, neutrality could be fairly said to be the quintessential liberal value, as liberal political theorists of the time maintained.

Increasingly, though, the doctrine of neutrality was applied by supporters of group rights to make the case that whatever one group got, other groups should get too. Both sides of the political spectrum embraced a doctrine that said, in essence, it is permissible, perhaps even constitutionally necessary, to accommodate cultural differences by granting groups the right to form and maintain their own separate enclaves—so long as this right is granted to all groups on equal terms. It was this same doctrine that underlay the principle of equal access that gave religious groups access to public facilities and services, such as Sign language interpreters for students in parochial schools. Now that doctrine was being used to justify allowing a religious group to establish its own local government.

Supported by this doctrine, the New York State legislature, for reasons having to do primarily with local politics, would pass three more statutes authorizing the KJ School District over the course of six years following the Supreme Court’s decision in Grumet. Each one sought to satisfy the principle of neutrality enunciated in Grumet. Whether they actually did so was a matter of debate. Grumet, for one, was certain they did not, and he carried on his legal campaign against the school district for another five years, up until the time the last of the authorizing statutes was passed. At that point, the torch was passed to the KJ dissidents, who filled the vacuum created by Grumet’s departure from

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