The residents, including three Orthodox Jewish rabbis, allege Airmont has engaged in systematic discrimination to dissuade them from staying in or moving to the village and forced them to practice their faith in hiding. The other suit, filed in 2018, is pending. The school, Central UTA of Monsey, which claimed it was blocked by zoning laws from expanding and operating, reached a settlement with the village in December.įirst Liberty, which represents the plaintiffs in both cases, along with private law firms, said the village agreed to fairly review the school's project applications within reasonable deadlines and Central UTA agreed to work with the land use review process to ensure compliance with state and local laws. The DOJ suit notes that Airmont's actions have been the subject of two other recent lawsuits - one by a Hasidic Jewish school and the other by a group of residents - and that the federal government's suit "should be deemed related" to them. The decree, which did not include admission of liability by Airmont, expired in 2015, and the DOJ says the village "has returned to its old ways in recent years." The two sides entered into a consent decree in 2011 that prohibited the village from imposing burdens on religious exercise and land use, according to the DOJ. The federal government has previously sued Airmont, claiming the village was using zoning laws to exclude Orthodox Jews and disrupt their religious exercise. The organization "openly and successfully stoked fears of a 'grim Hasidic belt' and exhorted the virtues of 'keeping the Hasidim out' in forming the village and enacting a restrictive zoning code," the suit says.
The DOJ contends the village came into existence in 1991 after a group called the Airmont Civic Association mobilized residents to incorporate as a separate municipality out of the town of Ramapo in reaction to the rising number of Orthodox Jews settling in the area.
The village website describes Airmont as a community of 9,000 people residing in 2,500 homes, with a culture represented by people of all races and creeds. "You'll find a lot of local zoning boards that end up enforcing arbitrary regulations against this community that would not be enforced if the gathering were secular in nature," Russell said. A lot of conflicts take place at the local level, and those cases get little news media coverage, she said. Keisha Russell, counsel at First Liberty Institute, a Plano, Texas-based nonprofit that litigates religious liberty cases, said discrimination against the Jewish community is more prevalent than many people realize.
The village cannot permit homes to become fire traps or other threats to human well-being," the court document says. can support the health, safety and welfare of all who gather there. "That is, of course, so long as the site - its size, fire safety, ingress, egress, bathrooms, parking, etc. In addition, residents can use a single-occupancy home as a regular public gathering space for any purpose, including group worship, according to the document.
#Airmount village court free#
In a court document, Airmont says its residential place of assembly law is applied equally to everyone and that "every village resident is free to pray in his or her home or anywhere in the village, without restriction or regulation, just like any other American." Members of Airmont's Board of Trustees, which is composed of the mayor and four trustees, did not respond to emails and a call seeking comment. attorney for the Southern District of New York, says the government has presented evidence that Airmont's zoning provisions were motivated by discriminatory animus and served no legitimate governmental purpose.
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