We applaud yesterday’s settlement brokered by the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights between a Lakewood homeowners association and an Orthodox Jewish tenant over the latter’s religious discrimination charge.
Nathan Reiss, an Orthodox Jewish tenant, had charged that the association’s insistence on locking an electric pedestrian gate at a community entrance near his home prevented him and other Orthodox Jewish Shabbos observers from walking to synagogue on Shabbos.
The NJ Law Against Discrimination requires housing providers, including private communities, condos, and co-ops, to accommodate their residents’ religious beliefs unless doing so would be an undue burden on their operations, according to Rachel Wainer Apter, the director of the NJ human rights agency.
New technologies such as electronic locks can easily prompt conflicts with our religious needs since most of our fellow citizens don’t share them. We welcome New Jersey’s sensitivity to the problem.