Racist Jewish school loses Supreme Court

A Jewish school’s admission policy amounted to race discrimination, the Supreme Court ruled in a landmark case today.

The case arose after a boy, referred to as M, was refused entry to JFS — formerly the Jews' Free School, in Brent, north west London — because he was not considered Jewish under the rules set by the chief rabbi.

Although the boy's father is Jewish by birth, his mother converted to the faith at a progressive synagogue that is not recognised by the orthodox faith. The family issued a legal challenge to the decision to exclude the boy, and the case went all the way to the higest court. Nine justices ruled against the school this morning, although the judges pointed out that the school's policy had not been motivated by racism in the perjorative sense of the term.

Sue Ashtiany, a partner at Nabarro, has provided an analysis of the decision:

The really important point of this judgement is that the Court has absolutely reinforced the view that direct discrimination, ie less favourable treatment on grounds of race or ethnicity, can and does occur irrespective of the motives or intentions of the discriminator. So even though the Court finds that the Chief Rabbi and the Jewish Free School are simply applying the tenets of their faith and are no way " racist", they have in fact breached the Race Relations Act. So the JFS policy of admitting only children it considers as " Jewish" was, in fact, racist — albeit not intentionally. More