New York’s Orthodox Jewish community is hailing as a win a recent verdict from New York’s highest court that brings to end a years-long conflict over the state’s regulation of private and religious schools — in spite of the fact that the Appellate judges didn’t side with their appeal. 

That’s because the Court of Appeals’ decision, although allowing the state to decide whether non-public schools meet the required standards, curbs the education department’s authority to take action against non-compliant schools, such as shutting them down or forcing student transfers. 

“Although we had hoped the court would go further and completely reverse the earlier decision, this ruling is still a major victory,” the group behind the appeal, Parents for Educational and Religious Liberty in Schools, known as PEARLS, stated on Wednesday. “The court made clear that the State Education Department has no authority to close yeshivas or force parents to remove their children. It reaffirms what we’ve been saying all along: that it is parents — not the state — who are responsible for their children’s education.”

The group further celebrated that the order allows parents to satisfy the state’s standards by supplementing any missing instruction at school by tutoring at home or at an after-school program. “That is what we have been advocating since the beginning of this litigation,” the group stated.

The ruling brings to an end a years-long legal dispute that began in 2022 when PEARLS, along with several yeshivas, sued the New York State Commissioner of Education for adopting a new set of standards for nonpublic and religious schools that required them to provide a “substantially equivalent” education to local public schools. 

With the new provision, schools that failed to meet those standards were no longer considered “a school which provides compulsory education.” According to PEARLS, the Education Department earlier this year deemed six yeshivas non-compliant and instructed parents to enroll their children elsewhere. 

The yeshivas claimed in their complaint that the new regulations violated their First Amendment rights and constituted an “invasive secular oversight” that threatens to “hamper and interfere with religious education. Yeshiva advocates have argued that learning the Talmud and other Jewish texts develops crucial analytical and language skills. They also warn that secular education requirements for science and health would conflict with their religious teachings. 

The state unanimously voted to approve the new regulations in the wake of a bombshell New York Times article that accused leaders of New York’s Hasidic community of exploiting public funding for Yeshivas all while “systematically” denying “generations of children” a “basic education” and “trapping many of them in a cycle of joblessness and dependency.” 

The piece was condemned by New York’s Orthodox communities as defamatory. Conservative thinktank, the Heritage Foundation, chided the Times for publishing a “hit piece” that was “rife with half-truths and distortions.” 

“Most yeshivas teach secular subjects, and many are among the highest-performing schools in the state, but a subset of Hasidic yeshivas focuses primarily on religious instruction and minimizes secular education,” the Heritage Foundation wrote. “Its rejection of mainstream culture and its values has kindled the ire of the New York Times.”

The lawsuit bopped through the legal system, going from the Supreme Court of New York to the Appellate Division, and then finally to the New York Court of Appeals. 

Wednesday’s ruling appeared to be welcomed warmly by both the plaintiffs and those who advocate for yeshiva reform. Young Advocates for Fair Education, a group that filed an amicus brief supporting the education department, declared the ruling “a significant victory for the thousands of New York children in Hasidic yeshivas who are being denied a basic education in secular subjects like math, English, history and science.” 

The group, however, called Wednesday’s ruling a jumping off point for further reform. “The fight for educational justice is far from over,” stated the president of Young Advocates for Fair Education. “We will continue to advocate – inside and outside the courtroom – until every child in New York receives the education they deserve.”

On the opposite side of the spectrum, PEARLs expressed its eagerness to reverse the status of the six yeshivas that were deemed non-equivalent and “ensure that those parents are quickly advised that their children can continue to receive services at their yeshivas.” 

The group added: “We hope that the State Education Department and the Department of Education will now do the right thing.  If they don’t, we will continue to fight to protect our children and our schools.”