This is the chronicle of how a founding principle of this country, the freedom to worship, crashed into a public bureaucracy in the venerable and prosperous New Jersey suburb of Bernards Township.
Claude Solnik
Long Island Business News
2150 Smithtown Ave.
Ronkonkoma, NY 11779-7348
Home > LI Confidential > Stop scratching on holidays
Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012
Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.
There, a brittle layer of shifting regulations sat atop a lava field of private contempt for Muslims on the part of some public officials who felt free to send email “jokes” that President Barack Obama was a Muslim, an illegal immigrant and a communist.
Most of all, it is a story of a rare phenomenon in American law: unconstitutional parking spots.
More than five years ago, the Islamic Society of Basking Ridge sought permits to build a mosque big enough for 150 people on a four-acre parcel, where zoning permitted houses of worship. Basking Ridge falls within Bernards Township.
This week, there is still no mosque — but five years of hearings and litigation about the proposal are drawing to a close. The Township Committee and Planning Board voted Tuesday night to settle lawsuits brought by the Department of Justice and the Islamic Society. Details of the settlement were not announced, but it will include the building permit long denied to the organization.
A federal judge ruled in December that the township and its officials had openly violated the Muslims’ rights.
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“Defendants’ express discrimination on the basis of religion warrants the highest protection of the Free Exercise Clause,” Judge Michael A. Shipp of Federal District Court wrote in a 57-page decision that cited a federal anti-discrimination statute and the vague standards in the township’s law.
At issue was an official demand that the mosque provide 107 parking spots for its 150 worshipers, instead of the ratio of one spot for every three users required of the township’s churches, synagogues, restaurants and auditoriums.
The Planning Board’s parking requirement for the mosque set off an avalanche: If the Islamic Society were to devote as much of its land to parking as the board demanded, it would not be able to comply with mandates for drainage and lighting.
During a hearing at the federal court in Trenton, a lawyer for the township, Howard Mankoff, said that the Planning Board applied different standards to the proposed mosque.
“Are both synagogues and mosques considered churches under the definitions that the township operates under?” Judge Shipp asked.
Mr. Mankoff: “No.”
Judge Shipp: “Is a mosque considered a church?”
Mr. Mankoff: “No.”
Judge Shipp: “So it is different?”
Mr. Mankoff: “Yes, your Honor.”
How so, the judge wanted to know. Mr. Mankoff said that mosques were busy on Friday evenings, rather than on Sundays.
Judge Shipp probed the implications of that answer.
“Is the board, in essence, adopting a policy that expressly applies different standards based on religion?” he asked.
“It’s not based on religion,” Mr. Mankoff said. “It’s based simply on the parking needs of the applicants.”
The judge did not accept that. “Counsel, you just stood there and told me that when you look at a mosque, you’re looking at a Friday worship,” Judge Shipp said. “When you look at Christian churches, you’re looking at a weekend worship.”
A lawyer for the Islamic Society, Adeel A. Mangi of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler, pointed out that the township’s synagogues did not have the same severe parking requirements. “They pray on a Friday, too,” Mr. Mangi said.
Over nearly four years, the proposed mosque was the subject of 39 hearings. Beneath the technical land-use discussions in public, a sulfurous tone was captured in emails that the Justice Department uncovered.
“As a religion, Islam owes its size and influence to a tradition from Day 1 of forced conversions through violent means,” wrote John Malay, who served on both the Planning Board and the Township Committee. Members of the two bodies discussed ways to exclude the president of the Islamic Society, Mohammad Ali Chaudry, a former mayor of the township, from a Sept. 11 commemoration. John Carpenter, a member of the Township Committee, wrote of President Obama: “Man child. The product of fools, raised by idiots and coddled by affirmative action. Behold the beast.”
None of these materials were part of Judge Shipp’s decision, which was based entirely on the filings made by the township itself.
Michael Turner, a spokesman for the township, said that many people served their township without compensation. They have the power and responsibility to shape the place where they live. In the case of Bernards Township, Judge Shipp found, it was too much.
“The Parking Ordinance unambiguously provides the Planning Board with unbridled and unconstitutional discretion,” he wrote.
Correction: May 24, 2017
An earlier version of this column rendered incorrectly part of the name of a law firm. It is Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler, not Patterson Belknap Webster & Tyler.
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