H eadlines
Jewish Issues Part of Supreme Court Agenda
NATIONAL RON KAMPEAS | JTA.ORG
WASHINGTON — The
Supreme Court opened a new
session of cases last week, and
an array of them affect Jewish
life in the United States.

But there is one issue that
a range of Jewish groups are
keenly interested in that is
not on the docket: the court’s
credibility. A series of bruising confir-
mation battles in recent years
and a pair of recent decisions
— on Texas’ controversial
abortion law and on President
Biden’s proposed moratoriums
on evictions in the wake of
the COVID-19 pandemic —
have polarized public opinion
about the court. In the wake of
last year’s rush by Republicans
to get Amy Coney Barrett
confirmed as the court’s sixth
conservative justice, following
the death of Ruth Bader
Ginsburg, there have been
calls from left-leaning groups
to reconstitute the court by
adding more justices.

Sensing the growing criti-
cism, several justices — liberal
and conservative — have
spoken out in recent weeks.

Barrett emphasized that
justices should not let personal
biases influence their decisions.

Samuel Alito dismissed claims
that the court’s conservatives
have formed a “shadow docket”
to push decisions through
without traditional debate
sessions. That has not appeased many
Jewish organizations, who
worry about how erosion of
the court’s reputation could
eventually harm Jews.

“There will be a time when
the court’s prestige is neces-
sary to protect individual or
group rights or the institu-
tional interests of the country,
and the prestige shouldn’t be
squandered,” said Marc Stern,
general counsel for the centrist
American Jewish Committee.

Rabbi Jonah Pesner, who
directs the Reform movement’s
more progressive Religious
Action Center, said recent court
decisions have set it on a path
toward radical changes, among
them severely curtailing the
right to an abortion.

“We are worried about the
hyper-polarization of the court
and the potential that it is
being delegitimized when it is
so out of sync with thoughtful
consensus issues, like access to
abortion,” Pesner said.

Under that cloud, the court’s
justices will hear a range of
impactful cases. Here are the
ones that Jews should know
about. The threat to
Roe v. Wade
The court has agreed to hear
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s
Health Organization, pitting
the state of Mississippi, which
bans most abortions after 15
weeks, against an abortion
clinic. Lower courts — including
those known to lean conser-
vative — have upheld the
abortion clinic’s claim that
the law violates the seminal
1973 decision that upheld a
woman’s right to an abortion,
Roe. v. Wade, which held that
abortions are legal until the
fetus is viable, at between 22-24
weeks of pregnancy.

The National Council of
Jewish Women is leading a
friend of the court brief on
behalf of the clinic, with
some 50 organizations signed
on, and the Religious Action
Center and Anti-Defamation
League have signed onto
separate amicus briefs.

NCJW has launched an
initiative, 73Forward (referring
to the decision’s year), that will
educate women about abortion
and help facilitate access to
abortions. It includes a compo-
nent called Rabbis for Repro,
now numbering some 1,500
rabbis, to underscore that for
many Jews, access to abortion
is a religious imperative.

“We are deeply concerned
about laws that would severely
limit access to abortion,”
Pesner said. He said the laws
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H eadlines
Pro-choice and anti-abortion activists protest alongside each other during a demonstration outside of the
Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 4.
Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images via JTA.org
particularly afflict segments of
the population that do not have
access to private care or the
means to travel to states with
more liberal laws.

Jody Rabhan, NCJW’s chief
policy officer, said that by
taking up the case the court
is signaling it wants to revisit
Roe v. Wade — even though
the Supreme court does not
usually take up cases that are
not in dispute in the lower
courts. A Pissarro painting’s
rightful place
In Cassirer v. Thyssen-
Bornemisza Foundation, the
descendants of a Jewish woman
forced to give up a Camille
Pissarro painting to Nazis
for her freedom are seeking
its restitution from its current
owner, a state-owned museum
in Madrid.

The case hinges on whether
California or Spanish law
applies here.

Spanish law allows an
owner to retain stolen property
if there was no reason at the
time of purchase to believe it
was stolen, and if no one comes
forward to claim it within a
given period of time. In the U.S.,
by contrast, there is no time
limit for the original owner to
reclaim stolen property.

Stern said the AJC is consid-
ering an amicus brief, in part
because he would like the court
to consider an issue narrower
than the thorny one of whether
Spanish law supersedes U.S.

law: if the museum is lying.

Stern does not believe
the museum carried out due
diligence when it acquired the
painting in 1999, and may not
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be entitled to the painting even
under Spanish law.

Paying for religious
schools Accepting a case involving
the separation of church and
state is the one sure way to get
dueling Jewish amicus briefs
before the Supreme Court.

Carson v. Makin fits the bill.

In Maine, some parents
want to use state funds to
send their children to religious
schools. Maine and Vermont
are the only two states that
allow parents of children in
rural districts without a high
school to opt out of sending
their kids to a neighboring
district’s public school. Instead,
they can use state funds to send
them to an in-district private
school — unless that private
school is religious.

The parents in Carson v.

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OCTOBER 14, 2021
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