Reply To: Enforcement of gittin in civil court custody cases in New York

For perhaps the first and last time, I may agree with Joseph. For a number of years, there had been an increase in the number of states which had attempted to recognize religious agreements and practices established in or pursuant to religious court decisions into state law. However in the past 2-3 years, there have been a number of states which have enacted legislation which seeks to restrict any formal recognition of religious court decisions in a thinly veiled reaction to a non-existent threat from Islamic Shariah law. Unfortunately, those same restrictive laws enacted as part of an Islamophobic hysteria also have the unintended effect of limiting recognition of the decisions of a beis din in secular court decisions in those jurisdictions. If the issue goes to SCOTUS, as it seem likely to do given the split in circuit court outcomes, unclear which way the court will go but it may ultimately conclude that state laws cannot “formally” recognize religious court outcomes that may infringe the parties’ exercise of constitutional rights.