A New York state court ruled that as a public accommodation, the Yeshiva is covered by the New York City Human Rights Act and is required to give the Pride Alliance the same access to the facility as dozens of other student groups. The group said that means access to a classroom, bulletin boards and a club exhibition stand. Sotomayor’s brief order stayed that decision “pending further order of the undersigned or the Court.” This indicated that more may be coming and that the court was now acting on a deadline. Sotomayor is the judge who hears emergency requests from the New York area, although such requests are usually referred to the full court. State appellate courts have yet to hear Yeshiva’s appeal, but rejected the university’s emergency request not to comply with the lower court’s ruling. New York poised to force ultra-Orthodox gesheba to meet education standards In a filing asking the Supreme Court to intervene, the university said that “as a deeply religious Jewish university, Yeshiva cannot comply with this order because to do so would violate its sincerely held religious beliefs about how to form of his undergraduate students in Torah values”. The school is represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which called the lower court’s decision an “unprecedented” violation of the university’s First Amendment rights. The student group said the lower court’s ruling was a simple interpretation of state law. He said the Supreme Court’s intervention was unwarranted, especially before New York’s appellate courts had a chance to weigh in. “This decision does not affect the University’s well-established right to express to all students its sincere beliefs about Torah values and sexual orientation,” the group said in its Supreme Court filing. At the same time, the filing adds, “it cannot deny certain students access to the non-denominational resources it offers to the entire student community based on sexual orientation.” The school does not require its officers or faculty to be Jewish and enrolls 5,000 undergraduate and graduate students of all religious backgrounds, the group said. Its affiliated Cardozo School of Law has had an official gay student body for years.
