Claiming that its decision not to grant official status to an undergraduate gay and lesbian group does not violate New York City’s antidiscrimination laws, Yeshiva University (YU) has argued that it is exempted by specific clauses in these laws granting exceptions for religious institutions. A state judge, however, recently ruled that YU is not an organization with “a religious purpose,” and therefore these exemptions don’t apply. In response, the school has petitioned the Supreme Court to intervene. Michael A. Helfand explains the “bold” legal argument YU is making:

[T]he First Amendment provides religious institutions the right to engage in internal religious decision-making free from governmental interference. Often referred to as the “church autonomy doctrine,” this constitutional principle is well established in numerous legal contexts. For example, it has provided the constitutional basis for why, at times, courts are instructed to stay out of property disputes between warring factions within a church.

This doctrine is also the basis for why houses of worship have the right to hire and fire ministers free from government regulation—why, for example, Orthodox synagogues are constitutionally permitted to reject all female applicants for a rabbinic position even though doing so in any other context would be prohibited sex discrimination. In 2020, the Supreme Court described this principle as providing religious institutions a constitutional guarantee of “independence in matters of faith and doctrine and in closely linked matters of internal government.”

The boundaries of the doctrine, however, are unsettled. What kinds of religious institutions qualify for this sort of protection? And what decisions are the sort of internal religious decision-making beyond the jurisdiction of courts?

Some scholars and judges have suggested that the doctrine should only apply to cases in which solving the underlying dispute would require a court to pick a side in theological questions, but does not apply when a court is simply asked to apply a law prohibiting certain forms of discrimination.

Addressing a recent meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Central Committee, Mahmoud Abbas criticized Hamas more sharply than he has previously (at least in public), calling them “sons of dogs.” The eighty-nine-year-old Palestinian Authority president urged the terrorist group to “stop the war of extermination in Gaza” and “hand over the American hostages.” The editors of the New York Sun comment:

Mr. Abbas has long been at odds with Hamas, which violently ousted his Fatah party from Gaza in 2007. The tone of today’s outburst, though, is new. Comparing rivals to canines, which Arabs consider dirty, is startling. Its motivation, though, was unrelated to the plight of the 59 remaining hostages, including 23 living ones. Instead, it was an attempt to use an opportune moment for reviving Abbas’s receding clout.

[W]hile Hamas’s popularity among Palestinians soared after its orgy of killing on October 7, 2023, it is now sinking. The terrorists are hoarding Gaza aid caches that Israel declines to replenish. As the war drags on, anti-Hamas protests rage across the Strip. Polls show that Hamas’s previously elevated support among West Bank Arabs is also down. Striking the iron while it’s hot, Abbas apparently longs to retake center stage. Can he?

Diminishing support for Hamas is yet to match the contempt Arabs feel toward Abbas himself. Hamas considers him irrelevant for what it calls “the resistance.”

[Meanwhile], Abbas is yet to condemn Hamas’s October 7 massacre. His recent announcement of ending alms for terror is a ruse.

Abbas, it’s worth noting, hasn’t saved all his epithets for Hamas. He also twice said of the Americans, “may their fathers be cursed.” Of course, after a long career of anti-Semitic incitement, Abbas can’t be expected to have a moral awakening. Nor is there much incentive for him to fake one. But, like the protests in Gaza, Abbas’s recent diatribe is a sign that Hamas is perceived as weak and that its stock is sinking.