Opinion ID: 2230068
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: kiryas joel i

Text: In an effort to resolve the longstanding controversy between Kiryas Joel and Monroe-Woodbury, the Legislature enacted chapter 748 of the Laws of 1989, [1] which established a union free school district coterminous with Kiryas Joel within the boundaries of Monroe-Woodbury. In Grumet v Board of Educ. of Kiryas Joel Vil. School Dist. (81 NY2d 518, supra), this Court held that chapter 748 contravened the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the Federal Constitution because it violated the second prong of the three-part test delineated in Lemon v Kurtzman (403 US 602). The Court reasoned that because the newly formed school district was coterminous with Kiryas Joel, only Hasidic children would attend the public school, and only members of the Hasidic sect would likely serve on the school board. The Court concluded that the statute therefore constituted a symbolic union of church and State effected by the establishment of the Kiryas Joel Village School District    [and was] likely to be perceived by the Satmarer Hasidim as an endorsement of their religious choices, or by nonadherents as a disapproval of their individual religious choices ( Grumet v Board of Educ., 81 NY2d, supra, at 529). The Supreme Court affirmed this Court's holding in Board of Educ. of Kiryas Joel Vil. School Dist. v Grumet (512 US 687, supra [Kiryas Joel I ]). In a 6 to 3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that chapter 748 violated the prohibition against government establishment of religion because the act was tantamount to an allocation of political power on a religious criterion and neither presupposes nor requires governmental impartiality toward religion (512 US, at 690). The Court stated that the statute departed from a constitutional requirement of neutrality toward religion by delegating the State's discretionary authority over public schools to a group defined by its character as a religious community, in a legal and historical context that gives no assurance that governmental power has been or will be exercised neutrally ( id., at 696; see also, id., at 703). The legislative act, in the words of the Supreme Court, left the Court without any direct way to review such state action for the purpose of safeguarding a principle at the heart of the Establishment Clause, that government should not prefer one religion to another, or religion to irreligion ( id., at 703).