Wednesday September 9, Agudath Israel of America filed an amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief in the Supreme Court of the United States in Grand v. City of University Heights, a case involving the right to hold religious gatherings in the home. 

The case centers on Daniel Grand, a man who sought to organize an at-home minyan (a Jewish prayer gathering requiring a quorum of ten men) on the Jewish Sabbath. Because observant Jews cannot drive or use electronics on the Sabbath, the city’s alleged concerns regarding traffic and noise were entirely negated. Nonetheless, University Heights treated the gathering as “a home operating as a house of worship” and required Mr. Grand to obtain a special use permit, while also encouraging neighbors to report gatherings and deploying police surveillance of the home. Mr. Grand sued the City in federal court. Ultimately the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals declined to reach the merits of his religious-liberty claims, ruling instead that they were not yet ripe because the local zoning board had not yet made a final determination as to whether the permit requirement applied to his gatherings. 

Agudath Israel’s brief urged the Supreme Court to reverse that decision, arguing that religious Americans should not be forced to submit to a discretionary permitting regime before a court may consider whether government action has already chilled core religious exercise in the home. 

The brief explains to the Court how deeply religious practices and the Jewish home are intertwined, giving examples such as sitting shiva in the home (thus requiring minyan to take place there as well), the obligation of teaching children, beshivtecha b’vaisecha, while sitting at home (recited every day in the Shema prayer) and bonding with family around the Shabbos and Yom Tov table. The brief relates the extensive history of government’s attempts to regulate religious gatherings in homes and the steps the founding fathers took to curtail that power.  

“A small prayer gathering in a private home is not merely a land-use issue.” said Daniel Kaminetsky, General Counsel of Agudath Israel. “It is a core exercise of faith. Zoning laws and permit requirements should not be used to burden religious worship in the home. The First Amendment and RLUIPA were designed to protect religious practice from exactly this kind of government interference, and we trust that the Court will reaffirm that religious worship is not dependent on the permission of local officials.” 

Agudath Israel thanks the Harvard Law School’s Religious Freedom Clinic and the attorneys who prepared the brief, Josh McDaniel, Kathryn Mahoney, and Jake McIntosh.