Shannon Mullen

@MullenAPP

LAKEWOOD - Three years after it first stirred controversy, a $10.6 million grant that Gov. Chris Christie’s administration awarded to the Beth Medrash Govoha yeshiva remains in limbo, pending the outcome of a legal challenge by civil liberties groups.

The all-male Orthodox Jewish college, based here, has yet to receive any of the money, and the two projects the grant was supposed to fund -- a new, three-story library and the expansion of an existing academic building -- still haven’t broken ground.

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The school’s selection and the size of the award raised questions when the grant was announced in April 2013. In all, the Christie administration awarded $1.3 billion in state grants to 46 New Jersey colleges and universities, nine of which were private, religiously affiliated institutions. The others included Georgian Court University, also based here, Seton Hall University in South Orange, the College of St. Elizabeth in Morristown and Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton.

The awards to religious schools drew criticism from civil liberties groups, which claimed the grants violated the state’s constitution and anti-discrimination laws.

Three groups, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU’s New Jersey chapter, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, filed a lawsuit in the Chancery Division of state Superior Court in June 2013, seeking to nullify two of the awards -- one to Princeton Theological Seminary for $645,323, and the other to Beth Medrash Govoha totaling $10,635,747.

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The complaint was later transferred to a state appellate court, which heard oral arguments in the case Monday.

“At a time when public school funding has been slashed in our state, it’s an insult for more than $11 million to go toward private, sectarian, religious institutions that actively exclude students based on religion or gender,” Edward Barocas, legal director of the ACLU-NJ, said in a prepared statement.

“New Jersey’s Constitution specifically forbids the use of taxpayers’ money to further a sectarian religious institution’s ability to teach its religion or train its clergy members,” Barcas said.

The New Jersey Attorney General, which is representing the state in the case, maintains the awards were legal and don’t favor any particular religious group.

“Although plaintiffs would like to quarantine religiously-affiliated institutions from generally available public benefits, this is not required under the law,” the state argues it its brief.

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“Financial aid can be awarded to religious institutions provided the aid serves a neutral purpose, is neutrally available to both religious and non-religious institutions, and has safeguards (as provided here) in place to ensure that the funds are not diverted to religious indoctrination.”

It’s not known when the case will be decided.

The money for the grants came from five different bond programs, including the Building Our Future or “GO Bond Act,” a $750 million fund the state’s voters approved in a 2012 referendum. The capital projects fund was aimed at helping the state’s public and private institutions of higher learning stay competitive with out-of-state schools that attract a large share of New Jersey’s home-grown students.

The grants were awarded for building construction, classrooms, technology upgrades, and other infrastructure projects. The grants

were approved based on consideration of several secular criteria, including whether the proposed project advances student education

in New Jersey, expands educational opportunities, or promotes workforce readiness and innovation, according to the state's brief.

The state’s brief notes that unlike many other states, the free exercise clause in New Jersey’s constitution is limited to prohibiting the “establishment of one religious sect in preference to another.”

“No such preference can be shown here as grants were awarded to all institutions who applied--religious and nonreligious alike. Indeed, even the two institutions targeted in this case represent two different religious sects,” the brief states.

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Beth Medrash Govoha, or BMG as it’s known locally, is licensed by the state to confer bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the study of the Talmud, a broad repository of Jewish law and teaching. With more than 6,500 students, including approximately 2,700 undergraduates and 3,800 graduate students, the college is ranked as the state’s fourth-largest institution of higher education at the time of its grant application.

The three-story library and research center the grant is meant to help fund would be 90 percent larger than the yeshiva’s current largest library, with a capacity of more than 76,000 volumes. It would include academic facilities on the third floor, including a student writing resource center and student career center.

Princeton Theological Seminary's grant is to fund new conference rooms and upgrades to the school's library.

Shannon Mullen: 732-643-4278; smullen4@gannettnj.com