Oorah “The Zones” Camps have filed a lawsuit in Federal Court against Schoharie County alleging they were targeted for their religious views. Oorah claims their camps were the victims of discrimination over the way they were treated during last summer due to COVID restrictions against them versus other camps. Oorah has a boys camp in Jefferson and a girls camp in Gilboa, both in Schoharie County. As YWN reported extensively, NY Governor Cuomo had ordered all summer camps closed for the summer of 2020 due to CIOVID-19. Many camps – including Oorah opened as “family residences” and not as “camps”. In the lawsuit, Oorah says their First and 14th Amendment protections, for freedom of religion and equal protection, were violated. The lawsuit claims that other facilities, such as the SUNY Cobleskill Campus never came under the same scrutiny as Oorah did. Inspectors slapped the camp with around $60,000 in violations this past summer, claiming that the families staying at the campus were not wearing masks or properly social distancing. Sources tell YWN that the camp has documented a long, clear pattern of discrimination against the camp for years. Additionally, YWN has learned that the State/local health departments are refusing to issue the camp residency permits for the upcoming summer, as well as building permits to rebuild the girls camp which suffered a massive fire at the end of last summer.  YWN notes that despite nearly every single camp being opened as a “family residence”, there wasn’t one COVID outbreak as Cuomo and his Health Department promised there would be. The lawsuit reads in part: Over the past decade, Oorah has time and again been subjected to official action discriminating against it based on its Orthodox Jewish character by the Defendants. The goal of these arbitrary and discriminatory actions has been to thwart the operation of Oorah’s religious programs and to deter Oorah’s staff, volunteers, and participants from the practice of their Jewish faith. Oorah has repeatedly been forced to obtain relief against Schoharie County in the state courts to allow it to operate its religious facilities. This hostility rose to a crescendo in 2020, when Defendants Schoharie County and Amy Gildemeister, the County’s Director of Public Health, exploited the COVID-19 pandemic to shut down Oorah’s operations completely in an illegal, premeditated, arbitrary, and discriminatory manner. Based on the barest unproven allegations of COVID-19 regulation and code violations (and in the absence of any confirmed case of COVID-19 at either Oorah facility), the Defendants, or either of them, engaged in repeated inspections of the properties, chased young Jewish children around the camps making them cry, issued cease and desist orders, demanded fines of $65,000, and “placarded” the camps, closing them down for family and Holy Day retreats. In undertaking all of the foregoing actions, the Defendants violated various due process requirements under New York law before such actions can be taken, including not holding regulatorily required hearings, repeatedly failing to re-inspect the properties in accordance with the relevant regulations despite repeated follow-up visits, and requests for same, neglecting to mention the requirement of a hearing in the cease and desist orders, and illegally revoking Oorah’s Temporary Residence permits without providing an opportunity for the regulatorily required hearing and fundamental due process. In spite of a New York State court holding that […]
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