Jewish school sues Cuomo and de Blasio for discriminatory COVID-19 lock down orders

Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio have not exactly endeared themselves to the Jewish community in New York since the COVID-19 pandemic began. First Bill de Blasio threatened to arrest Jewish people who were attending the funeral services of a beloved religious leader and now a Jewish school is suing the State of New York for violations of religious freedom and more for unfairly targeting the Jewish community out of fear. Here is more:

On Friday, an Orthodox Jewish school took Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.), Mayor Bill de Blasio (D-N.Y.C.), and other public officials to court over blatant violations of the rights of religious freedom, free speech, due process, and more. Cuomo and de Blasio issued a coronavirus order shuttering the Jewish school just before three sequential Jewish holy days. Cuomo falsely blamed the Orthodox Jewish community for a surge in COVID-19 cases in New York and compared the Orthodox community to the KKK.

Cuomo’s October 6 order shuttered Bais Yaakov Ateres Miriam (BYAM), an Orthodox Jewish girls’ school in Far Rockaway, New York City. In response, Yitzchok and Chana Lebovits, whose two daughters — one in third grade and one in kindergarten — attend BYAM, sued Cuomo, de Blasio, Attorney General Letitia James (D-N.Y.), Health Commissioner Howard Zucker, the City of New York, and the city’s health department.

“We are devastated for our daughters and their classmates who are needlessly suffering because of the Governor’s policy,” Chana Lebovits, the mother, said in a statement. “Governor Cuomo should not take away part of my daughters’ childhood because other people are afraid of Orthodox Jews. We hope the court will let our daughters go back to school so they can pray and learn together with their classmates.”

“There is no place for bigotry in the Big Apple,” Mark Rienzi, president and senior counsel at Becket, the religious liberty law firm representing the Lebovitses, said in a statement. “By Cuomo’s own admission, schools are not significant spreaders of COVID-19, and the new policy was not driven by science but was made from ‘fear’—fear of Orthodox Jews. Cuomo and de Blasio need to follow the science, follow the law, and stop scapegoating Jews. The Mayor and the Governor should be ashamed.”

malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium