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Denial of Equal Protection To Jews Claimed In Appeal of Bail Denial

By Howard M. Friedman

A fascinating religious discrimination issue is raised in a motion to reverse an Iowa federal magistrate's denial of bail in the prosecution of Sholom Rubashkin. (Full text of Motion and of the Memorandum in Support of the Motion in US v. Rubashkin, (ND IA, filed 12/8/08.)) Rubashkin is the former CEO of the large Postville, Iowa kosher meat packing plant, Agriprocessors, Inc. The plant was the subject of a high-profile immigration enforcement raid earlier this year. (See prior posting.) Originally Rubashkin, charged with immigration law violations, was released on bail. Two weeks later he was arrested under a superseding indictment, this one including bank fraud charges. This time the magistrate judge denied bail, claiming a risk that Rubashkin would flee to Israel. In denying bail, the magistrate pointed to the fact that two other Agriprocessors supervisors had fled, and that Israel's Law of Return gives Jews moving there an automatic right of citizenship.

In appealing the magistrate's order to the court, defendant argued first that the extradition treaty with Israel made reliance on the Law of Return useless. Defendant went on to argue that invoking the Law of Return violated his equal protection rights. The brief argues that a rule which treats Jews differently is subject to strict scrutiny. It went on:

The government clearly has a compelling interest in insuring that defendants are present at trial.... But it has no compelling interest in a rule that Jews are a heightened bail risk, for the simple reason that is has failed to demonstrate any statistical correlation between Jews and flight risk. In other words, the government introduced no evidence that Jews are more likely to flee because of the Law of Return than non-Jews. An unproven assumption is fatal in a case subject to strict scrutiny.... Moreover, there are clearly narrower, tailored measures, that would be effective rather than subjecting Jews to a different set of standards.

JTA reported on these developments yesterday.

Full post as published by Religion Clause on December 09, 2008 (boomark / email).