APY/Sam/ubiq:
All civil courts in the United States lack any authority to answer a question of religious law such as whether a claim that kosher certification is unreliably kosher. I can say a particular hechsher’s is unreliable in certifying foods as kosher, or even say that they certify non-kosher food as kosher, and even if I am wrong the agency cannot successfully sue for damages in court. This is because in order to determine damages the civil court would need to answer whether the agencies certification is in fact kosher under Jewish law. And civil courts legally cannot attempt to answer that question.
The idea that anyone can certify anything as kosher and no one is permitted to outright dispute their claim of it being kosher — because the certifyer can claim it is kosher under their own standards — is inaccurate. I can claim it isn’t kosher under MY standards. And if I say it isn’t kosher I mean it isn’t kosher under my standards.
No one has been successfully sued for saying an agencies kashrus standards are unreliable or even non-kosher unless they’ve had grossly incompetent counsel. And you can check court case history and you will not find any such example(s). I can say with impunity that Agency Z certifies non-Kosher food as kosher; or say Agency Z’s kosher certification is unreliable. If Agency Z sued me the case would be tossed out of court in a heartbeat.
If I publicly say that the kosher certified food is in fact non-kosher, I am saying that it isn’t kosher under MY standards of kosher. And I have the right to say that.
In fact, fairly recently there was a somewhat analogous court decision precisely along these lines. Hebrew National was sued for claiming their food is kosher where the plaintiff claimed it in fact was not kosher. U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank in St. Paul federal court ruled that he does not have jurisdiction over a dispute that he described as “intrinsically religious in nature.” Frank said he was constrained by clear Supreme Court precedent barring civil judges from resolving faith-based disputes. “Any judicial inquiry as to whether defendant misrepresented that its Hebrew National products are “100% kosher” would necessarily intrude upon rabbinical religious autonomy,” Frank wrote. “Naturally, therefore, this court cannot determine whether defendant’s Hebrew National products are in fact kosher without delving into questions of religious doctrine.”
The original claim in this case isn’t the important point I am bringing. Primarily note the reasoning and logic the federal court used to throw out the case without trial.