WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st May, 2020) A local planning board in the US state of New Jersey faces a lawsuit demanding an end to zoning ordinances that prohibit religious boarding schools as a backhanded way of discriminating against an Orthodox Jewish community, the Justice Department said in a press release on Wednesday.
"The Justice Department today announced that it filed a lawsuit against the township of Jackson and the township's planning board, alleging that they violated the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) and the Fair Housing Act (FHA) by targeting the Orthodox Jewish community through zoning ordinances restricting religious schools and barring religious boarding schools," the release said.
The complaint further alleges that the township and planning board deliberately targeted Orthodox Jews against a backdrop of extreme animus by some Jackson residents, who sought to keep members of the community from settling in Jackson.
"Using zoning laws to target Orthodox Jewish individuals for intentional discrimination and exclude them from a community is illegal and utterly incompatible with this Nation's values," Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Eric Dreiband said in the release. "Let me be clear. The Department of Justice will use the full force of its authority to stop such anti-Semitic conduct and prevent its recurrence."
RLUIPA protects religious institutions from unduly burdensome or discriminatory land use regulations, according to the release.
