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Jaiden, I don't know how you can work at this place. I can understand needing a job and needing training, but you are doing things in your work that are dishonest, unethical, and possibly criminal. You certainly have the right to do whatever you want, but to me, no job is worth compromising my principles in such a big way.

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Posts: 3060 | Registered: Nov 2003  |  IP: Logged | 

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First of all, if you serve peanuts to someone with a peanut allergy, they could die.

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Have the right to do whatever you want?

His actions here can be murder. Just the fact that he's doing them should get him thrown out of his job.

Harsh? Not really. Murder is somehow a touchy subject with me.

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Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged | 

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• Encourage your hotel to get an EpiPen for their First Aid kit. An EpiPen is an auto-injector that administers epinephrine. This can keep the allergy victim alive long enough to get emergency treatment. My cousin Hallie always carries one with her. http://www.epipen.com/index.html
• Anonymously report your hotel to local synagogues and/or Jewish organizations. They will take care of the rest.
• Speak anonymously to someone in the media - a reporter for the newspaper or someone from a news show. Chances are they will jump at the story.

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A series of state court decisions shortly after the statute's passage built a firm body of precedent supporting the constitutionality of the statute against challenges that its operative language was unconstitutionally vague.
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"whatever difficulty there may be in reaching a correct determination as to whether a given product is kosher, appellants are unduly apprehensive of the effect upon them and their business, of a wrong conclusion in that respect, since they are not required to act at their peril but only to exercise their judgment in good faith, in order to avoid coming into conflict with the statutes. Indeed, putting the statutes aside, such judgment they would be bound to exercise upon ordinary principles of fair dealing. By engaging in the business of selling kosher products they in effect assert an honest purpose to distinguish to the best of their judgment between what is and what is not kosher. The statutes require no more."

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In 1947, however, the Supreme Court held that the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment applies to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. 54 This constitutional evolution called [*958] the preclusive effect of the Hygrade holding into question. Though several unsuccessful Establishment Clause challenges were filed during the following decades, 55 it was not until 1992, in Ran-Dav's County Kosher, Inc. v. New Jersey, 56 that any court held the language of a kosher fraud statute to violate the First Amendment. 57 By a four-to-three vote, the New Jersey Supreme Court in Ran-Dav's held that the use of "the substantive standards of the laws of kashrut" in the state's kosher fraud regulations was "fatal" under the Establishment Clause. 58 Since that time, the momentum against kosher fraud statutes has increased. The suit in Barghout followed closely on the heels of Ran-Dav's, and in late 1995, a unanimous panel of the Fourth Circuit held the Baltimore kosher fraud ordinance unconstitutional. 59 Most recently, two kosher food vendors filed suit in federal court in New York challenging the New York statute on Establishment Clause grounds.

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It is well settled that a statute does not have to have an "exclusively secular" purpose…. Consequently, it is not fatal for a statute to be "motivated in part by a religious purpose," 66 and courts have generally accepted government assertions about the purpose of a law as long as the law evinces a "plausible secular purpose." 67

Kosher fraud laws easily clear this hurdle. Their obvious secular purpose is "preventing and punishing fraud and protecting consumers." 68 As Maryland's highest court held, the Baltimore ordinance "was drafted to protect people from unscrupulous vendors who try to lure them into buying something less than what they are entitled to expect."

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The beneficiaries of kosher fraud laws are more broadly defined. Although a large number of them are religious Jews, it may well be that the majority of kosher food shoppers are non-Jews.

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1. Discrimination Among Jews
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Judge Luttig contended that even if there were complete agreement among Jews that Orthodox standards define "kosher," he would still find the ordinance in violation of the Larson strict scrutiny test "because it singles out Orthodoxy for special protection, ... while at the same time protecting not at all adherents of the Conservative or Reformed sects against fraud in the labeling of food products that meet their dietary requirements." … A statute based on an Orthodox definition of kosher protects Conservative Jews equally only to the extent that they share Orthodox standards. Although he does not explain his objection in detail, Judge Luttig seems to be concerned with the small fraction of Conservative kosher practices that extend beyond the subset of protected Orthodox practices. … The problem, perhaps, lies in the potential inability of the state to prosecute such violations. If the state may not bring an action for fraud against a vendor whose food meets Conservative standards because a valid doctrinal dispute would require the court to dismiss the case, 109 how then could the state police the sale of foods that only purport to, but do not [*965] actually, meet Conservative standards? The answer is that the state probably could do so in those areas where the fraudulent element also violates Orthodox standards. For example, if swordfish is sold as "kosher swordfish," but the fish has been cooked together with meat - a mixture that both Conservative and Orthodox Jews agree robs fish of its kosher status - 110 it would not be impermissible for the state to bring an action for a violation of Orthodox kosher laws. The act being punished is not the selling of swordfish as kosher, but the selling of a non-kosher food, which happens to be swordfish, as kosher.

… kosher law enforcement almost always sticks to infringements of the areas that make up the core, uncontested areas of kashrut, 112 Judge Luttig's theory of underinclusion of Conservative Jews approaches the vanishing point of significance. One should be especially reluctant to condemn an effective consumer protection standard on underinclusiveness grounds when there is no evidence that the alleged victim of the standard feels slighted by it in any way. Indeed, the only evidence is to the contrary.

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2. Discrimination Against Non-Jews

Muslim dietary practices present perhaps the strongest case for an underinclusiveness challenge to kosher fraud laws primarily because their dietary practices are governed by an explicit code, halal, that is easily represented by a "halal-approved" label or even a symbol. 125 Like Judaism, Muslim dietary rules consist of categorically excluded foods and required [*968] methods of food preparation. 126 Except for its prohibition on consuming alcoholic beverages, however, these dietary prohibitions appear to be a subset of the prohibitions of kashrut. Thus it seems unlikely that a food item that violates the rules of halal would not also violate the rules of kashrut. 127 Consequently, it is difficult to say that Muslims and Jews receive disparate protection from kosher fraud laws. Indeed, Muslims should properly be classed as beneficiaries of the laws.
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Thus, it may be a perfectly fair [*970] and constitutionally adequate judgment by legislatures that the problem of kosher food fraud is significant enough to merit a separate law but the problem of halal food fraud does not even register on the map of social ills.

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1. The Misrepresentation Element: Factual Falsity

This is the element that has most troubled courts that have considered the constitutionality of kosher fraud statutes. In every kosher fraud case, the government must prove that the defendant vendor's representation about the food in question was false. 163 This means proving that the food was, in fact, not kosher. Except in cases in which the defendant admits that the food is not kosher, the government must resort to a variety of religious sources to prove the falsity of the vendor's representation.
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The neutral principles approach laid out by the Supreme Court in Jones v. Wolf 194 enables civil courts to render decisions on kosher status. In Jones the Court admonished civil courts construing church documents to "take special care to scrutinize [a] document in purely secular terms" and to avoid construing provisions that involve "religious concepts." …

The laws of kashrut are particularly amenable to this method of analysis because they are expressed almost entirely in secular terms. As noted in the introductory section of this Article, the rules mainly refer to "objectively ascertainable," "remarkably mundane" "physical attributes" of the food, 203 like what kind of animal the meat comes from - pig or cow - whether the sciatic nerve has been removed, whether meat and milk have been mixed, or whether the meat has been roasted over an open flame or soaked and salted for the proper duration of time.

Unquestionably, there are some issues within the detailed definition of kashrut that do not refer to objective, secular factors and on which civil courts could not pass. For example, the shochet - kosher slaughterer - is considered to hold a position of religious trust, and if he does not "maintain the standards of piety and skill worthy of his responsibility," 207 the product of his labor may be considered non-kosher. If an allegation were made that a particular piece of food was not kosher because slaughtered by an "impious" shochet, clearly courts could not resolve this dispute. …It should not be beyond the reach of a civil court to decide whether an objectively verifiable requirement of the slaughtering process - like whether the shochet severed the [*980] trachea and esophagus of the animal in a single knife-stroke 208 - has been met.

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It is also possible that a kosher fraud prosecution might encounter a vendor who asserts religious beliefs in the meaning of kosher contrary to the "official" meaning derived from Orthodox Jewish law. If the government were to punish such a person - for instance, a Conservative Jew selling swordfish as kosher - it would contravene the fundamental Free Exercise Clause prohibition against punishing someone for "professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs." 246 … In Ballard, the government charged the defendants with making fraudulent representations about their status as divine messengers and their healing powers. 248 The Court held that the First Amendment forbids a court from ruling on the truthfulness of the defendants' religious representations. As Justice Douglas wrote for the Court: "Heresy trials are foreign to our Constitution. Men may believe what they cannot prove. They may not be put to the proof of their religious doctrines or beliefs." 249 The Court did, however, permit inquiry into the defendants' sincerity in their professed beliefs. 250 Presumably, [*986] a defendant found to be lacking sufficient sincerity can be held liable for committing a religious fraud. 251

It is a threshold question in any case in which the defendant asserts a Ballard-style defense whether the defendant has actually made a "religious" representation. … If the court finds the defendant insincere from the outset, nothing in the Free Exercise Clause requires the court to abstain from assessing the truth of the defendant's claims.

…One recent survey of case law on this point reveals at least eleven types of evidence that courts have used to determine the insincerity of a claimed religious belief.

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Note: The article was published in 1997, I'm not looking up the pending case from the article on my break. So I don't know how it turned out.

Dagonee

Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003  |  IP: Logged | 

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(Don't get me started on the cafeteria in college that made macaroni and cheese one Friday and ADDED HAM TO IT!)

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Was this a Jewish college

Posts: 1839 | Registered: May 1999  |  IP: Logged | 

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Jeff's last sentence before he edited.

Added: What else would it be?

[ May 10, 2004, 01:11 PM: Message edited by: katharina ]

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Sorry, Kat, I guess I don't get it, even with your edit.

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