New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo agreed to allow Jewish schools in Far Rockaway reopen after several Orthodox Jewish families sued Cuomo for illegally discriminating against the school.
Cuomo said in a press conference on Wednesday that several Jewish neighborhoods he had placed under stringent lockdown orders could begin to reopen, declaring that they had shown “real progress” over the past week.
But Chana Lebovits, the mother of two students who attend an Orthodox Jewish school for girls, argued that Cuomo would not have relaxed his restrictions had she and her husband, Yitzchok, not sued him and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
In their lawsuit, the Lebovits’s alleged that Cuomo and de Blasio illegally discriminated against their daughters’ private school by forcing it to shut down despite the fact that the school had not had a single COVID-19 case.
Cuomo and de Blasio admitted much in a conversation with a group of rabbis, when Cuomo told them that his policy was not tailored to the community’s specific numbers.
“This is a fear-driven response, you know,” Cuomo told the rabbis. “This is not a policy being written by a scalpel; this is a policy being cut by a hatchet. It’s just very blunt.”
But by forcing private religious schools to keep their doors closed, Cuomo was “stripping parents of their right to direct the religious education and upbringing of their children,” according to Becket Law, a conservative nonprofit representing the Lebovits’s.
“The Governor shouldn’t have needed a lawsuit to tell him that shutting down Jewish schools was wrong. This was the worst kind of unscientific and harmful scapegoating, as the Governor himself knew that schools weren’t a problem,” Mark Rienzi, president of Becket, said in a statement.
“If Governor Cuomo wants respect, he has to give respect,” Rienzi said. “Reopening the schools in Far Rockaway is a start, but elected officials have a lot of work to do to repair the pain and division they have caused.”
At least three other Jewish organizations have filed lawsuits against Cuomo for his discriminatory policies.
