Reacting to a federal appeals court ruling that New York
State's 118-year-old statutes aimed at protecting consumers
of kosher food are unconstitutional, Agudath Israel of
America called the decision "a judicial body- blow to the
unsuspecting consumer."
The new ruling, which affirmed a lower court decision,
concerned a lawsuit brought in 1996 by Brian and Jeffrey
Yarmeisch, owners and operators of "Commack Self-Service
Kosher Meats" in Commack, Long Island.
Their store had been fined for failing to comply with the
law's mandate that foods sold as "kosher" must satisfy
"Orthodox Hebrew religious requirements."
They contended that their store was under a Conservative
rabbi's supervision and that New York State therefore acted
unconstitutionally in insisting on Orthodox standards.
The appeals court accepted the Yarmeisches' contention that
the New York law requires secular government officials to
make religious determinations in deciding whether a food is
in fact "kosher" under the statute's definition, thus
violating the First Amendment's "Establishment Clause," which
prohibits entanglement of state and religion.
However, Agudath Israel's executive vice president for
government and public affairs, Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, took
issue with that reasoning.
"This is a question of consumer protection, not religious
establishment. Government has every right to insist that a
product claiming a certain feature actually possesses that
feature, as a typical, reasonable consumer would understand
it. That right is no less present in the context of kosher
food than it is in the context of used cars and designer
jeans."
The Agudath Israel representative pointed out that in an
earlier case, in which the New Jersey state kosher laws were
under challenge, a legal brief submitted on behalf of the
Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist rabbinates
acknowledged that the word "kosher" is broadly understood as
encompassing Orthodox standards.
"True," he said, "the concept of kashrut is inherently
religious. But that doesn't make the labeling of products as
kosher any less of a secular consumer issue than whether a
'salt-free' or 'organically grown' product is what it claims
to be."
Agudath Israel is part of a larger group of prominent Jewish
individuals and organizations, represented by prominent
constitutional lawyer Nathan Lewin, who are defendants in the
Commack case.
They and the Kosher Law Enforcement Division of the New York
State Department of Agriculture and Markets, the agency that
administers the state's kosher laws, are each expected to ask
the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the Court of Appeals
ruling.
Despite the current setback, Mr. Zwiebel remains optimistic
that the High Court will indeed reinstate the New York
law:
"It is inconceivable that the U.S. Constitution prevents the
state from taking any action against an unscrupulous vendor
who deliberately misleads the public into thinking a food
item is kosher when it clearly is not. That cannot be what
the Founding Fathers had in mind when they enacted the Bill
of Rights."
