Kiryas Joel v. Grumet – Blue Cereal Education

Board of Education of Kiryas Joel Village School District v. Grumet (1994) – Part Three

Blue Cereal — Sat, 14 Nov 2020 15:37:25 +0000

Even Scalia couldn’t have genuinely believed that the First Amendment only kicked in once an institution attained a specific number of members or reached a preset threshold of political power. Playing on the struggles of the Satmar to set up the straw argument that the issue was one of dominance over the rest of New York was disingenuous at best, red-meat ranting better suited to Fox News than the nation’s highest court.

Board of Education of Kiryas Joel Village School District v. Grumet (1994) – Part Two

Blue Cereal — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 15:21:16 +0000

Kiryas Joel was (and is) a community of particularly insular Hasidic Jews (the Satmars) in New York. Most of their children attended private religious schools, but they asked the state for assistance providing care and education for their special needs children. Initial efforts to serve these particular children ran into conflict with recent Supreme Court rulings which struck down several public school efforts to serve high needs kids in religious institutions. New York responded by allowing the Satmars to create their own neighborhood and later a publicly funded neighborhood school tailored to their precise boundaries.

As a practical matter, it certainly solved the problem. Constitutionally, on the other hand...

Board of Education of Kiryas Joel Village School District v. Grumet (1994) – Part One

Blue Cereal — Tue, 10 Nov 2020 15:04:34 +0000

The circumstances of Kiryas Joel were unusual enough that the logistics themselves offer little to guide future students, parents, educators, or administrators. For anyone not living or working in a carefully constructed community of cultural outliers who end up with their own state-financed school district for special needs children, there seems (at first glance) to be little reason to devote more than a few lines to the case and its outcome.

And yet, taken in context, the case offers several points of interest and possible instruction – even for those uncertain what Hasidic Judaism even means.