תוקן על ידי רבי_יונה ב- 29/11/2011 20:32:20

תוקן על ידי האנדא ב- 29/11/2011 20:56:17

תוקן על ידי האנדא ב- 29/11/2011 20:57:25

דא איז ער מסביר

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by Kiryas Joel dissidents accusing community leaders of discrimination and arguing that the village is an unconstitutional "theocracy" that should be dissolved.

Civil-rights attorney Michael Sussman brought the case in June on behalf of residents who claim that secular and religious authority are closely entwined in Kiryas Joel and that village officials discriminate against them because of a split in the Satmar Hasidic movement over leadership.

In a decision signed Monday, Judge Jed Rakoff rejected the patchwork of claims, concluding that some had already been addressed in previous cases and that others were lacking because the alleged victims weren't parties to the case.

Among other things, the plaintiffs had accused the village's public safety force of acting as enforcers for the community's main congregation and failing to protect dissidents when they were menaced by young supporters of Grand Rebbe Aaron Teitelbaum.

The dissidents wanted the court to dismantle the 34-year-old village and place its roughly 21,000 residents under the government of the surrounding Town of Monroe.

Short of that, they asked the court to remove the current elected and appointed officials from office.

When the case was filed, village officials attributed the allegations to a "small group of discontented persons" and insisted they provide services to all residents without discrimination.

They also accused the plaintiffs of trying to undo the will of voters who elected Mayor Abraham Wieder and village trustees.

The lawsuit listed dissident grievances dating back to the village's first contested municipal election, in 2001. But the immediate trigger was a heated dispute over a dissident synagogue that resulted in the closure of the synagogue.

Rakoff declared in his ruling that any claims involving the closed synagogue were off limits because the conflict had already been litigated in two cases in state Supreme Court.

Sussman had contended that the combination of claims amounted to violations of the First and Fourteenth Amendments and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.

For instance, he claimed the alleged mingling of secular and religious authority constituted an establishment of religion, forbidden by the First Amendment.

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