{"id":799,"date":"2008-07-11T16:30:21","date_gmt":"2008-07-11T16:30:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2008\/07\/court-says-jews-have-no-right.php"},"modified":"2008-07-11T16:30:21","modified_gmt":"2008-07-11T16:30:21","slug":"court-says-jews-have-no-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/07\/court-says-jews-have-no-right","title":{"rendered":"Court Says Jews Have No Right to Mezuzahs in Condo Building"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Nicole Neroulias<br \/>\nReligion News Service<\/strong><br \/>\n(RNS) A federal appeals court in Chicago has ruled that fair-housing laws do not extend to permitting a Jewish resident to nail a mezuzah to a door frame, prompting an outcry from the Jewish community.<br \/>\nThe 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 ruling on Thursday (July 10), decided the federal Fair Housing Act does not accommodate a resident&#8217;s religious requirement to affix the Jewish emblem to a doorway, if the ban on hallway displays applies to everyone regardless of religious beliefs.<br \/>\nThe case stems from the condominium association at Shoreline Towers, a Chicago housing complex, enforcing a rule in 2004 banning doormats, shoes, signs and other materials in the hallways.<br \/>\nThe Bloch family sued after the repeated removal of their mezuzah &#8212; small encased biblical scrolls that are nailed to the entrances of Jewish homes &#8212; although the association later adopted a religious exception to the rule.<br \/>\nThe Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America criticized the court&#8217;s decision, and may appeal to Congress to amend the federal law, said the OU&#8217;s Washington director, Nathan J. Diament.<br \/>\n&#8220;We believe that irrespective of the facial neutrality of the condo association&#8217;s rule, that to ban a Jewish tenant from affixing a mezuzah ought to be viewed as a constructive eviction from their home and thus illegal under the Fair Housing Act,&#8221; he said.<br \/>\nCongress may consider amending the law to accommodate mezuzahs and other religious necessities if lawmakers are convinced a ban results in Jews not being able to live in a residence, said Howard M. Friedman, a University of Toledo law professor whose Religion Clause blog follows church-state legal cases.<br \/>\nThe Bloch family could also appeal to the Supreme Court, but it seems federal judges want to keep these cases in the hands of state and local authorities, he added.<br \/>\nThey probably didn&#8217;t want every dispute between a condo owner and condo boards going into federal court,&#8221; Friedman said. &#8220;This ruling didn&#8217;t say it was a good thing to have that kind of rule, but it just said that the federal Fair Housing Act doesn&#8217;t say anything about it, so it should be dealt with by state law.&#8221;<br \/>\nIn the last three years, Chicago and Illinois lawmakers have adopted laws guaranteeing tenants&#8217; rights to affix religious symbols to their doors, preventing Shoreline Towers from reverting back to the original ban.<br \/>\n&#8220;In this particular case, the issue is moot now,&#8221; Friedman said. &#8220;It may prompt other states to come up with their own laws, too.&#8221;<br \/>\n<em>Copyright 2008 Religion News Service.  All rights reserved.  No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Nicole Neroulias Religion News Service (RNS) A federal appeals court in Chicago has ruled that fair-housing laws do not extend to permitting a Jewish resident to nail a mezuzah to a door frame, prompting an outcry from the Jewish community. The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 ruling on Thursday (July&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Court Says Jews Have No Right to Mezuzahs in Condo Building<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/07\/court-says-jews-have-no-right\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Court Says Jews Have No Right to Mezuzahs in Condo Building\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Nicole Neroulias Religion News Service (RNS) A federal appeals court in Chicago has ruled that fair-housing laws do not extend to permitting a Jewish resident to nail a mezuzah to a door frame, prompting an outcry from the Jewish community. The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 ruling on Thursday (July&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/07\/court-says-jews-have-no-right\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-07-11T16:30:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"nsymmonds\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Court Says Jews Have No Right to Mezuzahs in Condo Building","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/07\/court-says-jews-have-no-right","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Court Says Jews Have No Right to Mezuzahs in Condo Building","og_description":"By Nicole Neroulias Religion News Service (RNS) A federal appeals court in Chicago has ruled that fair-housing laws do not extend to permitting a Jewish resident to nail a mezuzah to a door frame, prompting an outcry from the Jewish community. The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 ruling on Thursday (July&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/07\/court-says-jews-have-no-right","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2008-07-11T16:30:21+00:00","author":"nsymmonds","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/07\/court-says-jews-have-no-right","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/07\/court-says-jews-have-no-right","name":"Court Says Jews Have No Right to Mezuzahs in Condo Building","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-07-11T16:30:21+00:00","dateModified":"2008-07-11T16:30:21+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/07\/court-says-jews-have-no-right#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/07\/court-says-jews-have-no-right"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/07\/court-says-jews-have-no-right#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Court Says Jews Have No Right to Mezuzahs in Condo Building"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2","name":"nsymmonds","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","caption":"nsymmonds"},"description":"Nicole Symmonds is Beliefnet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Prayer editor and also covers Christianity. A New Yorker by birth but a Floridian by tenure, Nicole graduated from Florida A&M University with a B.S. in Public Relations and a minor in Sociology. She moved to NY to pursue a career in journalism which started at In Style magazine. There she learned the ropes of magazine reporting, researching, and writing\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand became exponentially more stylish. But what seemed like a deep interest in fashion and entertainment would soon be revealed as merely the vehicle that moved her closer to discovering her purpose, writing and covering matters of the Christian faith. While in her purpose-driven vehicle she can be found traveling between Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens for life, work and worship, respectively. From fashion to faith and the journey isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t over yet\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/nsymmonds"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}