NEW YORK STATE -- The sleepaway camp ban is staying in place following a ruling on Monday in favor of the ban by Chief Judge Glenn Suddaby of the Northern District of New York.

Suddaby's decision comes after The Association of Jewish Camp Operators (AJCO) recently filed a lawsuit against New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo, stating that the ban, among other things, violated their “constitutional rights of the free exercise of religion and the fundamental rights of parents to control the religious education and upbringing of their children, guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution and Article III, § 3 of the New York Constitution.”

The AJCO's lawsuit sought, “...immediate judicial relief from the statewide ban on all Jewish overnight camps by way of a temporary restraining order, followed by a preliminary and permanent injunction and a declaratory judgment that the challenged regulation is unconstitutional and void because it deprives them of their constitutional rights without constitutionally sufficient justification.”

In his ruling Suddaby said, “At this time, the Court finds that granting injunctive relief to open overnight summer camps runs contrary to the public interest in stopping the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Although ‘securing First Amendment rights is in the public interest,' N.Y. Progress & Prot. PAC v. Walsh, 733 F.3d 483, 488 (2d Cir. 2013), and ‘treatment of similarly situated entities in comparable ways serves public health interest at the same time it preserves bedrock free-exercise Guarantees,' Roberts v. Neace, 958 F.3d 409, 416 (6th Cir. 2020), the Court rejected Plaintiffs' arguments that Defendant infringed on their First Amendment rights and was not treating religion and secular conduct comparably above in Part III.A.3. of this Decision and Order.

“Given the unprecedented nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, the deadly nature of the virus itself, the lack of a vaccine at the time of this writing, and lack of scientific agreement about its transmission, the Court concludes that the issuance of an injunction is not in the public interest at this time.”