In California, a Court Rules against Jewish Families and for Religious Discrimination

Aug. 25 2023

In accordance with state law, the California government sometimes pays private schools to educate children with disabilities whose particular needs cannot be readily met by the public schools—so long as those private institutions have no religious affiliation. Such a qualification, argue Maury Litwack and Michael A. Helfand, violates the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence of the last six years. So too claim two Jewish schools and three Jewish families who challenged the law’s constitutionality in a federal district court, which recently ruled in favor of the schools. Litwack and Helfand criticize the decision:

The state outlines, in its laws, the various requirements regarding the educational quality and content a school must provide in order to become state-certified. There is no reason to assume, by definition, that religious schools cannot provide [appropriate] education. If other private schools can do so, religious schools should be given the same opportunity. Failing to do so, regardless of how it is described, is just another way to practice religious discrimination. Moreover, the government cannot circumvent this constitutional violation by simply saying it has the right to select which schools to contract with.

Indeed, the Supreme Court—in a case curiously omitted in the federal court’s opinion—explicitly rejected this argument in a 2021 decision. Requiring that schools not be religious in order to qualify for government contracts and student referrals is, again, just another form of religious discrimination.

Most disturbing are the consequences of this discrimination. As the court recognized, some of the plaintiff parents have alleged that their inability to send their special-needs children to a religious, state-certified school—one that can provide all the pedagogical benefits afforded by any other private school—has meant that the students’ progress is impeded because of their absences for religious holidays.

Even worse, the public schools continue to serve the unwitting children non-kosher food even as the parents have reiterated their religious objections to teachers. And maybe worst of all is the continued insinuation of California’s law that religious schools, willing and able to assist these students with disabilities, are somehow not worthy of joining the effort to provide special-needs children with an environment geared to helping them reach their potential.

Read more at Jewish Journal

More about: American law, California, Day schools, Education, Freedom of Religion

American Middle East Policy Should Focus Less on Stability and More on Weakening Enemies

Feb. 10 2025

To Elliott Abrams, Donald Trump’s plan to remove the entire population of Gaza while the Strip is rebuilt is “unworkable,” at least “as a concrete proposal.” But it is welcome insofar as “its sheer iconoclasm might lead to a healthy rethinking of U.S. strategy and perhaps of Arab and Israeli policies as well.” The U.S., writes Abrams, must not only move beyond the failed approach to Gaza, but also must reject other assumptions that have failed time and again. One is the commitment to an illusory stability:

For two decades, what American policymakers have called “stability” has meant the preservation of the situation in which Gaza was entirely under Hamas control, Hizballah dominated Lebanon, and Iran’s nuclear program advanced. A better term for that situation would have been “erosion,” as U.S. influence steadily slipped away and Washington’s allies became less secure. Now, the United States has a chance to stop that process and aim instead for “reinforcement”: bolstering its interests and allies and actively weakening its adversaries. The result would be a region where threats diminish and U.S. alliances grow stronger.

Such an approach must be applied above all to the greatest threat in today’s Middle East, that of a nuclear Iran:

Trump clearly remains open to the possibility (however small) that an aging [Iranian supreme leader Ali] Khamenei, after witnessing the collapse of [his regional proxies], mulling the possibility of brutal economic sanctions, and being fully aware of the restiveness of his own population, would accept an agreement that stops the nuclear-weapons program and halts payments and arms shipments to Iran’s proxies. But Trump should be equally aware of the trap Khamenei might be setting for him: a phony new negotiation meant to ensnare Washington in talks for years, with Tehran’s negotiators leading Trump on with the mirage of a successful deal and a Nobel Peace Prize at the end of the road while the Iranian nuclear-weapons program grows in the shadows.

Read more at Foreign Affairs

More about: Iran, Middle East, U.S. Foreign policy