ORTHODOX UNION SCOLDS NEW YORK APPELLATE
COURT FOR RULING AGAINST RELIGIOUS ACCOMMODATION

Today, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America - through
its Institute for Public Affairs - criticized a New York State appellate
panel for a decision issued last week against workplace religious
accommodation policy.

The ruling (issued by four judges of the Supreme Court's Appellate
Division, Brooklyn-based 2nd Department) held that a policy of the Port
Washington School District which allowed teachers, upon written request,
to receive any of the religious holidays officially recognized by the
N.Y. Commissioner of Education as a paid day off, rather than an unpaid
day of leave, as an unconstitutional violation of the separation of
church and state.  The court's stated rationale for this holding was
that the policy was benefiting religiously observant teachers at the
expense of those less observant or atheists.  The ruling was issued in
the case of Port Washington Union Free School Dist. v. Port Washington
Teachers Association.

Nathan Diament, director of the Union's Institute, issued the following
statement in connection with this ruling:

The New York Appellate Division has struck yet another blow against the
religious needs of workers being accommodated in the workplace.  The
court has turned the meaning of the Constitution's Establishment Clause
on its head - a provision that was written by our framers to ensure that
America would be a place where religious pluralism would flourish is now
deployed to say that a local school district may not act to ensure that
its teachers are not penalized for their religious observance.

Sadly, this ruling is only the latest of many that have paid little heed
to the principle and value of religious accommodation.  The Orthodox
Union is thus working with a broad coalition of groups to secure
Congress' passage of the Workplace Religious Freedom Act - a measure
that will restore to our law the notion that religious accommodation is
a valued principle.  We hope that New York's Court of Appeals will
reverse last week's ruling; we hope to work with all who support
religious liberty for that result."

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