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Supreme Court
To Hear Challenge

JAMES D. BESSER WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT

T

he Supreme Court, just
days into its new term, has
decided to hear a case with
major implications for the
Jewish community.
The justices said they would
hear a constitutional challenge to
the Religious Freedom Restora-
tion Act, which passed Congress
in 1993 after intensive lobbying
by a long list of Jewish groups.
The case involves a town in
Texas that rejected an application
by a Catholic church to expand
because of their contention that
the church was inside a desig-
nated historic district.
The Catholic group challenged
that decision in court, claiming
that the town's actions violated
RFRA, which mandated that
government bodies that seek to
restrict a religious freedom must
prove a compelling state interest
in doing so; officials of the parish
in question argued that they
needed to expand in order to sur-
vive.
The city, in turn, argued that
the law is unconstitutional, a view
that was not upheld by an appeals
court.
Now it will be up to the
Supreme Court to decide.
The Jewish groups that were
at the center of the coalition pro-
moting RFRA were pleased with
the decision to take the case; un-

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like a number of RFRA challenges
based on complaints by inmates
that prisons are violating their re-
ligious rights, the Texas case,
which involves land use, has a
more favorable "fact pattern" for
RFRA proponents.
Jewish groups had kept their
fingers crossed that the first ma-
jor RFRA challenge to reach the
court would not involve the reli-
gious rights of Satan worshipers
or some other unpopular group;
the Texas case, which involves a
respectable church and a straight-
forward land-use issue, is tailor -
made for their arguments.
`There are fewer side issues to
cloud the clear-cut religious lib-
erties question," said Michael
Lieberman, Washington counsel
for the Anti-Defamation League.
"It's a case that we and other
groups that support RFRA asked
the court to take; we will do every-
thing we can to make sure they
know there is a broad-based re-
ligious coalition that finds this an
essential guarantor of religious
liberty in America."
The ADL and other groups also
hope the court wi.11 clear up con-
fusion over the law that has led
to an avalanche of court cases
across the country.
The court is expected to make
a decision sometime before early
summer.

D.C. Too Busy To Notice
Sharon's Words

JAMES D. BESSER WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT

I

f you believe it was an acci-
dent that Israeli Infrastruc-
ture Minister Ariel Sharon
decided to announce new
West Bank settlements for up to
100,000 Israelis in the last fran-
tic days of the American election
campaigns, you probably also be-
lieve in politicians' promises and
the Tooth Fairy.
On Sunday, Mr. Sharon an-
nounced plans for two major
West Bank cities that would ef-
fectively double the number of Is-
raeli settlers living on the West
Bank.
Mr. Sharon's plans had not
been reviewed by Prime Minis-
ter Binyamin Netanyahu. But in
Washington, officials were wor-
ried that Mr. Netanyahu would
be under strong pressure to ap-
prove the plan — especially be-
cause of widespread anger in the
settlers' movement over the like-

lihood of a deal that, they say,
would endanger the 450 Jewish
settlers in Hebron.
The reaction here was low-key,
in part because of the electoral
frenzy, in part because officials
here suspected that the an-
nouncement was more for show
than for real.
"We've seen in the past that
Minister Sharon and others
make these announcements, but
that doesn't represent a govern-
ment decision," State Depart-
ment spokesman Nicholas Burns
said Monday. "So until we see a
government decision, I think I'll
refrain from reacting."
He repeated the oft-used offi-
cial formulation on the settle-
ments question: "We think they
are unhelpful." That message, he
said, was again being relayed to
the Israelis.
But the reaction was clearly