I remember how it was -- JR
Yeshiva University in New York City will not have to recognize an LGBT student club, at least not for the time being, according to an emergency ruling the U.S. Supreme Court issued
Founded in 1897, the Orthodox Jewish university describes itself in court documents as “the world’s premier Torah-based institution of higher education.” The word “yeshiva” itself refers to a traditional Jewish religious school. Recognizing the LGBT student organization would violate its religious teachings, the school argues.
The new ruling came as the high court has become increasingly protective of constitutionally guaranteed religious rights in recent years.
The order was issued by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who oversees emergency applications from New York and two other states within the 2nd Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals.
Sotomayor provided no reasons for her decision in the case known as Yeshiva University v. YU Pride Alliance, court file 22A184. Her order (pdf) states that the lower court ruling “is hereby stayed pending further order of the undersigned or of the Court.”
The university asked the U.S. Supreme Court to pause a court ruling that determined its refusal to recognize the YU Pride Alliance violated the New York City Human Rights Law (NYCHRL), which forbids discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. In the alternative, the school asked the high court to take up the case and fast-track it, something the high court may yet do.
Rabbi Ari Berman, president of Yeshiva University, hailed the new ruling. “We are pleased with Justice Sotomayor’s ruling which protects our religious liberty and identity as a leading faith-based academic institution,” Berman told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.
“But make no mistake, we will continue to strive to create an environment that welcomes all students, including those of our LGBTQ community. We remain committed to engaging in meaningful dialogue with our students, Rabbis, and faculty about how best to ensure an inclusive campus for all students in accordance with our Torah values.”
The attorney for the YU Pride Alliance, Katie Rosenfeld of Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward and Maazel LLP, said her client “will await a final order from the Supreme Court.”
The group “remains committed to creating a safe space for LGBTQ students on YU’s campus to build community and support one another without being discriminated against,” Rosenfeld told The Epoch Times by email.
In June, Judge Lynn Kotler of the 1st Judicial District of the New York Supreme Court, determined that the university was not a bona fide religious corporation so it was, therefore, not exempt from the public accommodation provisions of the NYCHRL, as The Epoch Times reported.
Kotler, a Democrat, ruled that even though the university is “religious” and “at first blush” appeared to be exempt from the law, its “organizing documents” do not “expressly indicate that Yeshiva has a religious purpose.”
Kotler stated that Yeshiva amended its charter in 1967 to become, in the words of the amending document, “an educational corporation under the Education Law of the State of New York.” The document states that “Yeshiva University is and continues to be organized and operated exclusively for educational purposes.”
Although in 1965, the NYCHRL “excluded ‘colleges and universities’ from classification as a place of public accommodation, in 1991, the City Council removed this exemption from the NYCHRL.” This means, the judge wrote, that the court’s finding that “Yeshiva is not exempt from the NYCHRL is wholly consistent with the legislative intent of the NYCHRL, which requires that exemption from it be narrowly construed in order to minimize discriminatory conduct.”
Kotler issued a permanent injunction directing Yeshiva to “immediately grant Plaintiff YU Pride Alliance” official approval as a club.
The university’s attorney, Eric S. Baxter of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, previously said Kotler’s ruling was “an unprecedented intrusion into the autonomy of a religious organization and a gross violation of the First Amendment.”
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Affirmative action hurts Asian-Americans—but the left just shrugs
In her landmark 2003 opinion legalizing affirmative action in Grutter v. Bollinger, Sandra Day O’Connor famously wrote, “The Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary.”
This is the only time I can think of when the Supreme Court assigned an expiration date to a constitutional right. We’re coming up on Justice O’Connor’s deadline and — right on schedule — the Supreme Court is poised to end affirmative action in lawsuits against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina.
But the legal argument is not that affirmative action is unnecessary. It’s that it causes schools to actively discriminate against Asian applicants. The evidence is infuriatingly strong.
A 2009 study by Princeton professor Thomas Espenshade found that Asian applicants had to score 140 points higher than white ones on the SAT to have the same chance of admission to elite colleges, 270 points higher than Hispanic applicants, and 450 points higher than black ones. Progressives usually argue that Espenshade himself said his evidence isn’t a smoking gun, because Asian applicants are possibly worse than other races on all the soft factors beyond GPAs and test scores.
I can’t help but notice that liberals don’t demand a smoking gun when inquiring into racism against other ethnicities.
It’s kind of funny and sad that our antiracist society buys the argument that elite colleges aren’t discriminating against Asians because we’re just cowardly, unlikeable, unkind worker drones who aren’t leaders. It’s common knowledge that this is the exact same argument that Harvard made when it discriminated against Jews almost a century ago.
Harvard wanted to reduce its population of Jewish students from 25- to 15%. The university called that “the Jewish problem.” To accomplish this without imposing a strict quota, it introduced “character” requirements like leadership, which it found Jewish applicants consistently fell short on. It also introduced legacy admissions to further address its Jewish problem.
I don’t think we need to bring in Sherlock Holmes on this one. Harvard is discriminating against Asian applicants in exactly the same way it did against Jewish ones, for exactly the same reasons, with exactly the same results, and exactly the same justifications. But when you look at media analysis of the issue, you get a dozen progressive think pieces about how calling this “racism” is just a conservative talking point.
Society seems to be going in the direction of handing out education, jobs, honors and even medical treatment on the basis of race. New York, Utah and Minnesota all allocated scarce lifesaving COVID-19 treatments on the basis of race, explicitly prioritizing nonwhite people above white ones on the CDC’s recommendation.
Race-based victim status isn’t just a shortcut to education and lifesaving care these days. It’s also becoming a qualification for government money. In March 2021, Oakland announced to great fanfare that it was launching a pilot program testing universal basic income, distributing $500 a month to 600 low-income families for eighteen months.
There’s a catch: white people weren’t eligible to apply. Officials and media justified this discrimination by appealing to gaps in median wealth between races; the editorial board of the Daily Californian breathlessly praised, “The radical potential of guaranteed income based on race.”
But individuals are not mere representatives of their race, and a poor black family and a poor white one with the same amount of money are equally poor no matter what’s happening to the median white and black family. As the threat of lawsuits rolled in, Oakland quietly changed its eligibility requirements to say that people of all races are permitted to apply to the program, though its focus is still on helping “BIPOC” people.
This is clearly a fig leaf to hide the city’s naked discrimination from the equal protection clause of the US Constitution. I don’t think the Constitution will be so easily fooled, and I hope the same is true for today’s judges who interpret it.
https://nypost.com/2022/09/10/affirmative-action-hurts-asian-americansbut-the-left-just-shrugs/
************************************************Save NYC school snow days, Chancellor Banks, and let our kids have actual childhoods
Announcing that city public-school kids will now have to sign in for remote learning when snow shutters the actual schools, Chancellor David Banks chirped: “Sorry, kids! No more snow days, but it’s gonna be good for you.”
No, it won’t.
Remote learning was, with few exceptions, a complete disaster for New York’s schoolkids. Just look at the pandemic-year data on everything from enrollment numbers (down 10%) to learning loss (40% of students across the city fell below math benchmarks over the 2021 academic year; in reading, 50%) — to say nothing about skyrocketing rates of mental illness among adolescents.
In short, to learn and thrive, kids need to be physically present in school with their buddies and teachers. Not parked, as the chancellor seems to envision, in front of a screen for eight hours.
Yes, remote learning can work in certain limited contexts — for, say, an honors calculus class at Stuyvesant. But what Banks’ edict means for the vast majority of NYC schools will be teachers pretending to teach (many not even virtually present for class, since union rules say they don’t have to be), and an utter loss for students.
And yes, the proliferation of school holidays (which is likely driving the “no more snow days” move, as the Department of Education legally must “teach” 180 days a year) is a problem Banks can’t easily fix. But chaining little kids to their tablets while snow sparkles outside isn’t the answer.
Disturbing, too, is the notion that technology is good in itself that seems to underlie the call. Just because schools can present content at a distance, over tablets and laptops, doesn’t mean they should. It’s no substitute for rigorous, in-person instruction in fundamentals and actual education innovation. Note as well that those tablets and laptops, lent by the DOE, often simply failed to work for NYC’s lower-income families even as the DOE provided no tech support.
Meanwhile, play — free, unstructured, and as unsupervised as possible — is also hugely important for kids. It helps them develop self-reliance, sharpens their social skills, improves their physical health and provides a necessary outlet from the very real stresses and pressures they face. In our era of hyperstimulation, pointlessly putting them in front of yet another screen when they could be outside having a snowball fight is as absurd as it is cruel.
So long live snow days! Chancellor Banks, if you really have the best interests of kids at heart — and we know you do — you need to reconsider your decision.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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