Reviewing Annalise E. Glauz-Todrank’s new book on Judging Jewish Identity in the United States

In her new volume on Judging Jewish Identity in the United States, Annalise E. Glauz-Todrank devotes ample space to the 1987 case of Shaare Tefila v. Cobb.

Shaare Tefila is critical in that it established that ethno-religious group members, such as Jews and Sikhs, could avail themselves of civil rights protections that were established in Nineteenth Century civil rights legislation to protect against race discrimination but not religious discrimination. Shaare Tefila, together with its companion case St. Francis College v. Al-Khazraji, has since played an instrumental role in providing a legal foundation for the protection of ethno-religious groups under analogous Twentieth Century racial discrimination laws in the United States.

Glauz-Todrank though does not address Shaare Tefila’s instrumentality in enabling a large-scale revision in the way that Jewish Americans and other religious groups are treated under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. However, Shaare Tefila paved the road to the passage of the 2004 Policy, known as the Marcus Doctrine (after LDB Chairman Kenneth L. Marcus), under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which announced that discrimination on the basis of ancestral or ethnic characteristics is no less permissible against groups that also have religious attributes than against those that do not.

The Marcus Doctrine has since been widely adopted by federal agencies, most recently as part of the Biden Administration’s National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism. While Glauz-Todrank omits highlighting Shaare Tefila’s vital role in such developments, her work still sheds well-deserved light on the case and allows a deeper understanding. But it is time to reappraise the importance of the Shaare Tefila case, and to recognize it as the landmark decision that it clearly was.