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You are here: Home / East Ramapo Central School District / East Ramapo School Board / East Ramapo trial: Judge wants Rabbi Oshry arrested if he doesn’t show up to testify

East Ramapo trial: Judge wants Rabbi Oshry arrested if he doesn’t show up to testify

February 26, 2020 by Michael Castelluccio

East Ramapo School District in Federal Court UPDATE. The Journal News February 24

“The federal judge presiding over a voting rights case involving the East Ramapo school board on Tuesday issued an arrest warrant for a prominent Orthodox Jewish rabbi who has so far resisted efforts to get him to testify.

U.S. District Court Judge Cathy Seibel gave Rabbi Yehuda Oshry until Thursday morning to appear in White Plains or face arrest.

“I don’t think he can hide in his house forever,” Seibel said Tuesday. “He’s just inviting incarceration if he doesn’t come today or tomorrow.”

If Oshry does not appear Thursday, when the trial is expected to end, he could be arrested and held in custody until both sides can arrange to hear his testimony. Seibel announced on Monday that she was holding Oshry in contempt of court.

The showdown over Oshry’s trial testimony has mostly played out behind the scenes over the past week as attorneys for the NAACP have tried to serve Oshry with a subpoena requiring him to testify.

Around 3 p.m. on Friday, a process server went to Oshry’s Spring Valley home and was told by a woman living there that he was not home, according to an affidavit filed with the court.

“I rang the bell and spoke to a woman over the intercom,” process server Nicholas DiCanio writes. “She refused to come to the door to accept service.”

DiCanio left the subpoena in the mailbox.

The Spring Valley chapter of the NAACP is suing the East Ramapo Central School District over its at-large method for electing school board members.

The NAACP, which is being represented by the New York Civil Liberties Union and lawyers with Latham & Watkins, argued the district should abandon the current system in favor of a ward or neighborhood-based system that would increase the number of blacks and Latinos on the nine-member board.

The federal judge presiding over a voting rights case involving the East Ramapo school board on Tuesday issued an arrest warrant for a prominent Orthodox Jewish rabbi who has so far resisted efforts to get him to testify.

U.S. District Court Judge Cathy Seibel gave Rabbi Yehuda Oshry until Thursday morning to appear in White Plains or face arrest.

Behind-the-scenes figure

Trial witnesses have identified Oshry as a behind-the-scenes player in the Orthodox Jewish community’s get-out-the vote efforts, collecting the signatures for the petitions that qualify school board candidates to run.

They say the voting setup has allowed the board to be dominated by Orthodox Jewish men, elected to the the board with the help of a shadow “slating” organization.

Trial witnesses have identified Oshry as a behind-the-scenes player in the Orthodox Jewish community’s get-out-the vote efforts, collecting the signatures for the petitions that qualify school board candidates to run.”

Read the complete Journal News coverage here.

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Filed Under: East Ramapo School Board, NAACP

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