The New York State Education Department’s wings clipped in yeshivah regs ruling

IN

the long saga of the New York State Education Department’s efforts to rein in the autonomy of yeshivos and the chinuch they provide, a long-awaited decision from the state’s highest court is seen as a victory for the yeshivah community.

On June 18, the New York State Court of Appeals ruled that while the SED was within its authority to conduct “substantial equivalency” reviews and make determinations, it did not have the ultimate authority to close schools or force the unenrollment of students from schools.

The decision declared that, “Nothing in these provisions requires that parents ‘unenroll’ their children from a nonpublic school deemed not to provide substantially equivalent instruction. Nor do the regulations authorize school closures.” It added, “The parent or custodian must determine how then to ensure their compliance with the Education Law.”

Translated into non-legalese, this means that the regulations themselves remain in effect — but SED may not order the closure of a yeshivah, nor may it direct parents to remove their children. Crucially, the ruling confirms that parents may supplement their child’s education outside of school.

The ruling drew applause from advocates. “That is what we have been advocating since the outset of this litigation,” PEARLS said in a statement.

Opponents of yeshivos attempted to frame the ruling as a victory on the technical ground that the Court did not strike down the regulations. But the ruling imposed the constraints on SED’s authority that the yeshivos sought and clarified the limits of that authority.

For example, as recently as May 15, 2025, SED released a letter in which it referred to six yeshivos that it deemed nonequivalent as “institutions not authorized to operate as schools.” In other words, SED believed that they were no longer schools. Just two weeks earlier, the New York Times reported that “the department has announced plans to close six Hasidic yeshivas.”

The Court of Appeals decision prevents SED from effectuating those closures.

In an April 10, 2025 letter to parents whose children receive special education services at those six yeshivos, the NYC Department of Education wrote, “Given that your child will no longer be able to attend [their yeshivah], a decision must be made about which school your child will attend for the 2025-2026 school year.”

Now, the Department of Education cannot insist that parents unenroll their children from those yeshivos.

The State’s brief to the Court of Appeals was just as explicit. It asserted that, “Petitioners (the yeshivos –Ed.) misconstrue the Education Law as entitling parents to cobble together an instructional program from a deficient nonpublic school and supplemental instruction at home,” and that “no provision of the Education Law authorizes the kind of hybrid instruction envisioned by Supreme Court and the dissent below, in which students are both instructed at home and enrolled in a non-substantially equivalent school.”

“SED’s position was that it had the right to close schools and direct parents to unenroll their children from their school, and that parents don’t have the right to combine sources of instruction,” said PEARLS executive director Yossi Grunwald. “The Court of Appeals said to the contrary on all three points.”

IN 2018, SED released guidelines that strictly regulated yeshivah education. There were requirements mandating which classes needed to be taught, and for how long. Yeshivos and other private schools would be subject to inspections to determine whether they complied with a long list of requirements that filled a checklist spanning multiple pages.

Though that phrase “substantially equivalent” had existed in state law for over a century, it was viewed as a mandate that parents had to fulfill, not an obligation that private schools must meet to remain in operation. Schools were only visited if there was a complaint, and the State itself acknowledged that it had “no direct authority over private schools.”

The 2018 guidelines released by SED changed all that, sparking immediate outrage and backlash from the yeshivah community.

Because the new standards were issued as administrative guidance — not legislation — they bypassed the usual channels for political negotiation and stymied traditional shtadlanus. The debate over chinuch shifted quickly from the statehouse to the courthouse.

The guidelines were struck down in April 2019 on the grounds that SED had improperly bypassed the public comment and review period necessary before regulations are adopted.

SED immediately repackaged those guidelines as regulations. But the yeshivos and others in the private school community undertook a massive campaign to oppose them — and again prevailed. In late 2021, SED withdrew its proposed regulations.

That’s where things remained until 2022, when SED returned with new proposed regulations — known as “Part 130” — which created a process for the regular evaluation of nonpublic schools. There were several “pathways” that offered routes to avoid a review, including accreditation, assessments or registration. Almost all non-Jewish private schools were exempt from review because of these pathways. The schools left for review were almost exclusively yeshivos.

When SED strictly applied the Part 130 Regulations to a yeshivah in October 2022, it was back to the courthouse.

PEARLS, Agudah, and Torah Umesorah, along with the five oldest yeshivos in New York, filed suit, arguing that the Department had vastly exceeded its legal mandate.

The case eventually reached the New York State Court of Appeals — and the justices drew a firm line.

The ruling also came just weeks after a parallel development in Albany. In May, Governor Kathy Hochul and a bloc of pro-yeshivah legislators — including Assemblymen Simcha Eichenstein, Aaron Weider, Kalman Yeger, and Sam Berger — successfully inserted language into the state budget that offers more flexibility in how substantial equivalency can be demonstrated.

That legislative change, game-changing as it was as a practical matter, had no bearing on the litigation, which focused on the question of how far SED’s authority over yeshivos and yeshivah parents extended.

At the Court of Appeals, the questions were whether SED had the authority to close nonequivalent schools and to direct parents to unenroll their children from them, and whether parents can supplement the school-based education their children receive. The court’s answer was a resounding “no” to SED and “yes” to yeshivah parents.

According to Avi Schick, who has represented the yeshivah community in this battle over the past decade, “The fundamental issue we have been fighting over is whether parents and not the state direct the upbringing and education of their children.”

“It took a decade,” said Mr. Schick, “but last week New York’s highest court confirmed that parents have rights superior to those of the State when it comes to the education of their children.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1067)