BREAKING: Supreme Court lifts injunction in Yeshiva U case

Does the First Amendment permit a State to force a Jewish school to instruct its students in accordance with an interpretation of Torah that the school, after careful study, has concluded is incorrect? The answer to that question is surely “no.” The First Amendment guarantees the right to the free exercise of religion, and if that provision means anything, it prohibits a State from enforcing its own preferred interpretation of Holy Scripture. Yet that is exactly what New York has done in this case, and it is disappointing that a majority of this Court refuses to provide relief. …

Dissatisfied with this response, the Alliance sued Yeshiva in state court, claiming that its refusal to recognize the group violated a provision of the New York City Human Rights Law (NYCHRL) that forbids discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender. The trial court agreed. Perfunctorily dismissing the University’s First Amendment arguments, the court ordered Yeshiva to recognize the group and to “immediately” grant it “the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges afforded to all other student groups.” Id., at 71. The court denied Yeshiva’s request for a stay pending appeal, and when the University applied to the Appellate Division and the Court of Appeals for interim relief, those courts refused without providing a single word of explanation. As a last resort, Yeshiva turned to this Court, but the majority— for no good reason—sends the University back to the state courts. The upshot is that Yeshiva is almost certain to be compelled for at least some period of time (and perhaps for a lengthy spell) to instruct its students in accordance with what it regards as an incorrect interpretation of Torah and Jewish law.

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Via Dan McLaughlin at NRO, who adds:

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined with the three liberals (including Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson) in this ruling. Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the four dissenters that Yeshiva should win on the merits and is having its religious liberty deprived by sending the case back, deeming it “ironic” that the Court denied to the nation’s most prominent religious Jewish university the same relief it once granted to Nazis.