“It’s a horrible, barbaric ritual. The chickens suffer immensely. And we don’t agree with it,” Steinau said in an interview. Her greatest objection was that young kids participate. “When you show children violence toward animals, they lose their compassion. They develop a disrespect and numbness toward these sentient beings, but they also get the same feelings toward people.” Karen Davis, who runs United Poultry Concerns out of Machipango, Virginia, added that the group has been involved in rescue efforts to save chickens from being used in ritual in the past.

The practice of kaporos has long been controversial inside and outside of the Jewish community. Steinau, for example, describes herself as a Reform Jew. She’s part of a group called the Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos; seven of the 10 founding members of the group are Jewish, according to Davis. Part of their objection is that the custom isn’t described in the Torah or the Talmud. It’s a tradition that’s part of rabbinical teachings, and because it’s not a legal obligation, they argue, it can be changed or abandoned. The group encourages Jews to swing coins rather than chickens, which is already the custom in many communities. A minority of Orthodox Jews, however, still use live birds.

What’s curious about the case in Irvine, however, is that kaporos happened anyways—according to David Eliezrie, a Chabad rabbi who is the president of the Rabbinical Council of Orange County, the organization was never planning to perform kaporos on the premises of Chabad this year. On Monday night, a group of Jews gathered in a local slaughterhouse to perform the ritual in order to comply with changes in California state law, he said. In other words: The last-minute restraining order—issued on the eve of a holiday when Orthodox Jews cannot work or be online, let alone file legal briefs—was a restraining order against nothing.

That doesn’t mean the lawsuit hasn’t become a problem for the Jewish community in Irvine. Eliezrie said a family there just lost an infant child, and the rabbi named in the suit, Alter Tenenbaum, has been trying to tend to their needs. While all this legal back and forth has been going on, the Jews in that community have been busy preparing for Yom Kippur, a holiday that involves fasting and focuses on forgiveness and renewal.

“We want to talk about repentance, how we should change our lives, how we should get our act together,” said Eliezrie. “Instead, we’re all involved in this meshugas about chickens because we have a meshugennah lady in Virginia who got a bunch of lawyers to go in and serve a shul … so she can get publicity.” (Meshugas is Yiddish for “craziness.” Shul is another word for “synagogue.”)

United Poultry Concerns has been involved in some high-profile protests in the past—they objected to the use of eggs in the White House Easter-egg roll, for example. Davis pointed out the the group maintains a number of campaigns to protect the lives of poultry, and doesn’t just focus on Jewish groups. But Eliezrie felt as though his community had been singled out. “The real story is how animal-rights activists are using religious traditions and oppressing religious minorities to advance an agenda,” he said.